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NOV  24  1917 


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HISTORY    OF    RELIGION 


First  Edition. 

Second  Edition 

Reprinted 

Reprinted 

Repri?ited 

Reprinted 

Reprinted 

Third  Edition 

Fourth  Edition 

Reprinted 


April  1895 

September  1895 

March  1897 

Ju7ie  1900 

Ja7iuary  1902 

March  1903 

October  1905 

January  1908 

September  1 9 1 1 

June  1914 


HISTORY  OF  RELIGION 


A  SKETCH  OF  PRIMITIVE   RELIGIOUS    BELIEFS 
AND  PRACTICES,  AND  OF  THE  ORIGIN  AND 


.**^^" 


CHARACTER  OF  THE  GREAT  SYSTEMS r.X  ?' 


\\« 


^V^^  v< 


\ 


NOV  24  191 
By  ALLAN  MENZIES,  I).DS<t{^(jr,~^^^i  ^^^V^ 

PROFESSOR   OF    BIBLICAL   CRITICISM    IN    IHE  UNIVERSITY  OF    ST.    ANDREWS 


j_lJn\v£r:s>it-Nf  Ser\es 


'  Known  unto  God  are  all  his  works  from  the  beginning  of  the  world.' 

— Acts  xv.  i8. 


NEW    YORK 

CHARLES   SCRIBNER'S    SONS 

597-599   FIFTH    AVENUE 

1917 


PREFACE 

This  book  makes  no  pretence  to  be  a  guide  to  all  the 
mythologies,  or  to  all  the  religious  practices  which 
have  prevailed  in  the  world.  It  is  intended  to  aid 
the  student  who  desires  to  obtain  a  general  idea  of 
comparative  religion,  by  exhibiting  the  subject  as  a 
connected  and  organic  whole,  and  by  indicating  the 
leading  points  of  view  from  which  each  of  the  great 
systems  may  best  be  understood.  A  certain  amount 
of  discussion  is  employed  in  order  to  bring  clearly 
before  the  reader  the  great  motives  and  ideas  by  which 
the  various  religions  are  inspired,  and  the  movements 
of  thought  which  they  present.  And  the  attempt  is 
made  to  exhibit  the  great  manifestations  of  human 
piety  in  their  genealogical  connection.  The  writer  has 
ventured  to  deal  with  the  religions  of  the  Bible,  each 
in  its  proper  historical  place,  and  trusts  that  he  has 
not  by  doing  so  rendered  any  disservice  either  to 
Christian  faith  or  to  the  science  of  religion.  It  is 
obvious  that  in  a  work  claiming  to  be  scientific,  and 
appealing  to  men  of  every  faith,  all  religions  must  be 
treated  impartially,  and  that  the  same  method  must 
be  applied  to  each  of  them. 


vi  Preface 

In  a  field  of  study,  every  part  of  which  is  being 
ilkiminated  almost  every  year  by  fresh  discoveries,  such 
a  sketch  as  the  present  can  be  merely  tentative,  and 
must  soon,  in  many  of  its  parts,  grow  antiquated  and 
be  superseded.  And  where  so  much  depends  on  the 
selection  of  some  facts  out  of  many  which  might  have 
been  employed,  it  will  no  doubt  appear  to  readers 
who  have  some  acquaintance  with  the  subject,  that 
here  and  there  a  better  choice  might  have  been  made. 
The  writer  hopes  that  the  great  difficulty  will  not  be 
overlooked  with  which  he  has  had  to  contend,  of  com- 
pressing a  vast  subject  into  a  compendious  statement 
without  allowing  its  life  and  interest  to  evaporate  in 
the  process. 

For  a  fuller  bibliography  than  is  given  in  this  volume 
the  reader  may  consult  the  works  of  Dr.  C.  P.  Tiele, 
and  of  Dr.  Chantepie  de  la  Saussaye.  It  will  readily 
be  believed  that  the  writer  of  this  volume  has  been 
indebted  to  many  an  author  whom  he  has  not  named. 

Si.  ANDRitWiJ,  1895. 


PREFACE   TO   THE   THIRD 
(REVISED)   EDITION 

Since  this  book  first  appeared  twelve  years  ago  it 
has  been  several  times  reprinted  without  change. 
Advantage  has  now  been  taken,  however,  of  a  call 
for  a  fresh  issue,  to  introduce  into  it  some  alterations 
and  additions,  such  as  its  stereotyped  form  allows. 
Some  mistakes  have  been  corrected,  the  names  of 
recent  books  have  been  added  to  the  bibliographies, 
and  in  some  chapters,  especially  those  dealing  with 
the  Semitic  religions,  considerable  changes  have  been 
made.  In  going  over  the  book  for  this  purpose,  I  have 
seen  very  clearly  that  if  it  had  been  called  for  and 
written  at  this  time  instead  of  twelve  years  ago,  some 
things  which  are  in  it  need  not  have  appeared,  and 
additions  might  have  been  made  which  are  not  now 
possible.  The  last  twelve  years  have  made  a  great 
change  in  the  study  of  religions  ;  the  prejudices  with 
which  it  was  regarded  have  almost  passed  away,  powerful 
forces  have  been  enlisted  in  its  service,  and  admirable 
works  have  appeared  dealing  with  various  parts  of  the 
vast  field.     Yet   I   am  glad  to  think  that  the  attempt 

vii 


viii    Preface  to  the   Third  [Revised)  Edition 

made  in  this  book  to  furnish  a  simple  introduction  to 
a  deeply  important  study,  and  especially  to  promote 
the  understanding  of  the  religions  of  the  Bible  by 
placing  them  in  their  connection  with  the  religion  of 
mankind  at  large,  may  still  prove  useful. 

St.  Andrews,  June  1907. 


PREFACE   TO   THE    FOURTH 
EDITION 

This  book  is  now  being  reprinted  in  a  somewhat  larger 
type,  and  an  opportunity  is  given,  less  restricted  than 
the  last,  for  making  changes  in  it.  It  is  impossible 
for  me  at  present  to  re-write  it ;  it  appears  substantially 
as  it  was.  Some  alterations  and  additions  have  been 
made  in  the  earlier  chapters,  and  the  bibliographies 
have  been  brought  more  nearly  up  to  date.  I  would 
take  this  opportunity  of  directing  the  attention  of 
readers  of  this  book  to  the  published  Proceedings  of 
the  Oxford  Congress  of  the  History  of  Religion,  held 
in  September  1908.  They  will  there  see  how  large 
this  field  of  study  has  now  grown,  and  what  varied 
life  and  movement  every  part  of  it  contains.  I  have 
given  references  only  to  the  addresses  of  the  Presidents 
of  the  Sections  of  the  Congress,  in  which  a  fresh  review 
will  be  found  of  recent  progress  in  the  study  of  each 
of  the  great  religions. 


St.  Andrews,  July  1910. 


IX 


CONTENTS 
PART   I 

THE    RELIGION    OF   THE   EARLY   WORLD 


CHAPTER   I 

INTRODUCTION 


PAGE 


Position  of  the  science  —  Unity  of  all  religion  —  The 
growth  of  religion  continuous — Preliminary  definition 
of  religion  —  Criticism  of  other  definitions  —  Fuller 
definition — Religion  and  civilisation  advance  together         1-18 


CHAPTER   II 

THE   BEGINNING  OF  RELIGION 

Origin  of  civilisation — It  was  from  the  savage  state  that 
civilisation  was  by  degrees  produced — The  religion 
of  savages — All  savages  have  religion — It  is  a  psycho- 
logical necessity 19-28 

CHAPTER   III 

THE   EARLIEST   OBJECTS   OF   WORSHIP 

Nature-worship — Ancestor- worship  —  Fetish-worship  —  A 
supreme  being — Which  gods  were  first  worshipped  ? — 
Fetish-gods  came  first  —  Spirits,  human  or  quasi- 
human,  came  first— Theories   of  Mr.    Spencer  and 

xi 


xil  Contents 


PAGE 


Mr.  Tylor  —  Animism  —  The  minor  nature- worship 
came  first — Theories  of  Mr.  M.  Miiller  and  of  Ed.  von 
Hartmann — Thegreat  nature-powers  came  first — Both 
nature-worship  and  the  worship  of  spirits  are  sources 
of  early  religion — Conclusion 29-50 

CHAPTER    IV 

EARLY    DEVELOPMENTS — BELIEF 

Growth  of  the  great  gods — Polytheism — Kathenotheism — 
The  minor  nature-worship — The  worship  of  animals 
— Trees,  wells,  stones^The  state  after  death — Growth 
of  the  great  religions  out  of  these  beliefs    .        .        .       51-65 

CHAPTER   V 

EARLY   DEVELOPMENTS — PRACTICES 

Sacrifice  —  Prayer — Sacred  places,  objects,  persons — 
Magic — Character  of  early  religion — Early  religion 
and  morality 66-78 

CHAPTER   VI 

NATIONAL   RELIGION 

Classifications  of  religions — Rise  of  national  religion — It 
affords  a  new  social  bond  —  And  a  better  God  — 
Example — The  Inca  religion 79-90 


PART   II 

ISOLATED   NATIONAL   RELIGIONS 

CHAPTER   VI! 

BABYLON  AND  ASSYRIA 

People  and  literature — Worship  of  spirits — Worship  of 
animals — The  great  Gods — Mythology — The  state 
religion 91-105 


Contents  xiii 


CHAPTER   VIII 

CHINA 


PAGE 


History  of  China — The  literature  of  the  religion — The 
state  religion  of  ancient  China — Heaven — The  spirits 
— Ancestors — Confucius — His  life — His  doctrine — 
Taoism — Buddhism  in  China  .        .        •        .   106-125 


CHAPTER   IX 

THE   RELIGION   OF   ANCIENT  EGYPT 

History  and  literature — i.  Animal  worship  —  Theories 
accounting  for  it — 2.  The  great  Gods — They  also 
are  local  —  Mythology  —  Dynasties  of  gods  —  Ra 
— Osiris  —  Ptah  —  Was  the  earliest  religion  mono- 
theistic ?  —  Syncretism  —  Pantheism  —  Worship  —  3. 
The  doctrine  of  the  other  life  —  Treatment  of  the 
dead — The  spirit  in  the  under- world — The  Book  of 
the  Dead — Conclusion 126-157 


PART    III 
THE   SEMITIC   GROUP 

CHAPTER  X 

THE  SEMITIC  RELIGION 

Home  of  the  Semites — Character  of  the  race — Their  early 
religious  ideas  —  Difference  between  Semitic  and 
Aryan  religion 159-169 


xlv  Contents 


CHAPTER   XI 

PAGE 
CANAANITES   AND   PHENICIANS 

The  Religion  of  the  Canaanites— The  Phenicians— Their 
gods  —  Astral  deities  of  Phenicia — Influence  of 
Phenicianart 170-178 


CHAPTER  XII 

ISRAEL 

The  sacred  literature— The  people— Jehovah— The  early 
ritual  was  simple — Contact  with  Canaanite  religion — 
Danger  of  fusion — ReUgious  conflict — The  monarchy 
— Religion  not  centralised — The  Prophets — The  old 
religion  national— Criticism  of  the  old  religion  by 
the  prophets — Appearance  of  Universalism— Ethical 
monotheism — Individualism  of  the  prophetic  teach- 
ing—  The  reforms  —  Deuteronomy  —  Earlier  codes 
— The  exile  —  The  return  ;  the  reform  of  Ezra- 
Character  of  the  later  reUgion — Heathenish  elements 
of  Judaism — Spiritual  elements — The  Psalms — The 
Synagogue  —  The  national  hopes  —  The  state  after 
death    '. 179-216 


CHAPTER   XIII 

ISLAM 

Arabia  before  Mahomet— The  old  religion — Confusion 
of  worship  —  Allah  —  Judaism  and  Christianity  in 
Arabia— Mahomet,  early  life— His  religious  impres- 
sions—The revelations— His  preaching— Persecution 
—  Trials;  decides  to  leave  Mecca  —  Mahomet  at 
Medina— New  religious  union — Breach  with  Judaism 
and  Christianity — Domestic — Conquest  of  Mecca — 
Mecca  made  the  capital  of  Islam— Spread  of  Islam— 
The  duties  of  the  Moslem  —  The  Koran  — Islam  a 
universal  religion 217-242 


Contents  xv 

PART    IV 

THE   ARYAN   GROUP 

CHAPTER   XIV 

PAGE 

THE  ARYAN    RELIGION 

The  Aryans,  their  early  home — Their  civilisation  described 
—  Little  known  of  their  gods  —  Their  worship  was 
domestic 243-255 

CHAPTER  XV 

THE  TEUTONS 

The  Aryans  in  Europe — The  ancient  Germans — The  early 
German  gods — The  working  religion — Later  German 
religion — Iceland — The  Eddas — The  gods  of  the 
Eddas — The  twilight  of  the  gods      ....   256-273 

CHAPTER  XVI 

GREECE 

People  and  land— ^Earliest  religion  ;  functional  deities- 
Growth  of  Greek  gods — Stones,  animals,  trees — Greek 
religion  is  local — Artistic  tendency— Early  Eastern 
influences — Homer — The  Homeric  gods — Worship 
in  Homer — Omens^The  state  after  death — Hesiod — 
The  poets  and  the  working  religion^Rise  of  religious 
art — Festivals  and  games — Zeus  and  Apollo — Change 
of  the  Greek  spirit  in  sixth  century  B.C.  —  New 
religious  feeling  ;  the  mysteries — Religion  and  philo- 
sophy    274-304 

CHAPTER   XVII 

THE   RELIGION  OF   ROME 

Roman  religion  was  different  from  Greek — The  earliest 
gods  of  Rome  are  functional  beings^The  worship  of 
these  beings — The  great  gods  —  Sacred  persons — 


xvi  Contents 


PAGE 


Roman  religion  legal  rather  than  priestly — Changes 
introduced  from  without^Etruria — Greek  gods  in 
Rome  — The  Graeco-Roman  religion  —  Decay  and 
confusion 305-323 


CHAPTER   XVIII 

THE   RELIGIONS   OF  INDIA 

I.   The  Vedic  Religion 

Relation  of  Indian  to  Aryan  religion— The  Rigveda — The 
Vedic  gods — Hymns  to  the  gods — To  what  stage 
does  this  religion  belong? — It  is  primitive — It  is 
advanced — In  spite  of  many  gods,  a  tendency  to 
Monotheism 324-337 


CHAPTER  XIX 

INDIA 

II.  Brahmanism 

The  caste  system:  the  Brahmans — The  growth  of  the 
sacred  literature  —  Sacrifice — Practical  life— Philo- 
sophy—Transmigration— Later  developments   .        .  338-352 


CHAPTER   XX 

INDIA 

III.  Buddhism 

The  literature — Was  there  a  personal  founder?  —  The 
story  of  the  founder— Is  Buddhism  a  revolt  against 
Brahmanism  ?  —  The  Buddha  —  The  doctrine  — 
Buddhist  morality — Nirvana — No  gods — The  order 
—Buddhism  made  popular — Conclusion — Buddhism 
is  not  a  complete  religion 353-380 


Contents 


xvii 


CHAPTER  XXI 

PERSIA 

Sources — The  contents  of  the  Zend-Avesta  are  composite 
— Zoroaster — Primitive  religion  of  Iran — The  call  of 
Zarathustra — The  doctrine — Its  inconsistencies — Man 
is  called  to  judge  between  the  gods — This  religion 
is  essentially  intolerant  —  Growth  of  Mazdeism  — 
Organisation  of  the  heavenly  beings — The  attributes 
of  Ahura — Ancient  testimonies  to  the  Persian  religion 
— The  Vendidad  :  laws  of  purity — How  this  doctrine 
entered  Mazdeism  —  Influence  of  Mazdeism  on 
Judaism  and  in  other  directions        .... 


PAGE 


381-408 


PART   V 


UNIVERSAL   RELIGION 


CHAPTER   XXII 

CHRISTIANITY 

State  of  Jewish  religion  at  the  Christian  era — The  teach- 
ing of  Jesus — His  person  and  work — Universalism 
of  Christianity — The  Apostle  Paul — What  Christianity 
received  from  Judaism — And  from  the  Greek  world — 
The  diflferent  religions  of  Christian  nations  and  the 
common  Christianity  .......   409-425 


CHAPTER   XXIII 

CONCLUSION 

Tribal,  national,  and  individual  religion — This  the  central 
development — Has  to  be  studied  in  nations — Periods 
of  general  advance  in  religion — Conditions  of  religious 
progress        . 426-434 


INDEX 


435-440 


PART   I 

THE   RELIGION   OF   THE   EARLY    WORLD 


CHAPTER   I 

INTRODUCTION 

The  science  to  which  this  Httle  volume  is  devoted  is  a 
comparatively  new  one.  It  is  scarcely  half  a  century 
since  the  attention  of  Western  Europe  began  to  fix 
itself  seriously  on  the  great  religions  of  the  East,  and 
the  study  of  these  ancient  systems  aroused  reflection 
on  the  great  facts  that  the  world  possesses  not  one 
religion  only,  but  several,  nay,  many  religions,  and 
that  these  exhibit  both  great  differences  and  great 
resemblances.  The  agitation  of  mind  then  awakened 
by  the  thought  that  other  faiths  might  be  compared 
with  Christianity,  has  to  a  large  extent  passed  away  ; 
and  on  the  other  hand  fresh  fields  of  knowledge  have 
been  opened  to  the  student  of  the  worships  of  man- 
kind. By  new  methods  of  research  the  religions  of 
Greece  and  Rome  have  come  to  be  known  as  they 
never  were  before ;  and  all  the  other  religions  of  which 
we  formerly  knew  anything  have  been  led  to  tell  their 
stories  in  a  new  way.  A  new  study  —  that  of  the 
earliest  human  life  on  the  earth — has  brought  to  light 
many  primitive  beliefs  and  practices,  which  seem  to 
explain  early  religious  ideas ;  and  the  accounts  of 
missionaries  and  others  about  savage  tribes  now  exist- 
ing in  different  parts  of  the  world,  are  seen  to  be  full 
of  a  significance  which  was  not  noticed  formerly.  We 
are  thus  in  a  very  different  position  from  our  fathers 
for  studying  the  religion  of  the  world  as  a  whole.     To 

3 


4  History  of  Redgion  part  i 

them  their  own  reh'gion  was  the  true  one  and  all  the 
others  were  false.  Calvin  speaks  of  the  "  immense 
welter  of  errors  "  in  which  the  whole  world  outside  of 
Christianity  is  immersed ;  it  is  unnecessary  for  him 
to  deal  with  these  errors,  he  can  at  once  proceed  to 
set  forth  the  true  doctrine.  The  belief  of  the  early 
fathers  of  the  Church,  that  all  worships  but  those  of 
Judaism  and  Christianity  were  directed  to  demons, 
and  that  the  demons  bore  sway  in  them,  practically 
prevailed  till  our  own  day ;  and  it  could  not  but  do 
so,  since  no  other  religions  than  these  were  really 
known.  That  ignorance  has  ceased,  and  we  are 
responsible  for  forming  a  view  of  the  subject  accord- 
ing to  the  light  that  has  been  given  us. 

The  science  of  religion, though  of  such  recent  origin, 
has  already  passed  beyond  its  earliest  stage,  as  a 
reference  even  to  its  earlier  and  its  later  names  will 
show.  "  Comparative  Religion "  was  the  title  given 
at  first  to  the  combined  study  of  various  religions. 
What  had  to  be  done,  it  was  thought,  was  to  compare 
them.  The  facts  about  them  had  to  be  collected,  the 
systems  arranged  according  to  the  best  information 
procurable,  and  then  laid  side  by  side,  that  it  might 
be  seen  what  features  they  had  in  common  and  what 
each  had  to  distinguish  it  from  the  others.  Work  of 
this  kind  is  still  abundantly  necessary.  The  collec- 
tion of  materials  and  the  specifying  of  the  similarities 
and  dissimilarities  of  the  various  faiths  will  long  occupy 
many  workers. 

Unity  of  all  Religion. — But  recent  works  on  the 
religions  of  the  world  regarded  as  a  whole  have  been 
called  "  histories."  We  have  the  well-known  History 
of  Religion  of  M.  Chantepie  de  la  Saussaye,  now  in 
its  third  edition,  and  the  Comparative  History  of  the 
Religions  of  Antiquity  of  M.  Tiele.  A  history  of 
\J  religion  may  be  either  of  two  things.  The  word 
history  may  be  used  as  in  the  term  Natural  History, 
to  denote  a  reasoned  account  of  this   department   of 


CHAP.  I  Introdiiciio7t  5 

human  life,  without  attempting  any  chronological 
sequence ;  or  it  may  be  used  as  when  we  speak  of 
the  History  of  the  Romans,  an  attempt  being  made 
to  tell  the  story  of  religion  in  the  world  in  the  order 
of  time.  In  either  case  the  use  of  the  term  "history" 
indicates  that  the  study  now  aims  at  something  more 
than  the  accumulation  of  materials  and  the  pointing  out 
of  resemblances  and  analogies,  namely,  at  arranging 
the  materials  at  its  command  so  as  to  show  them  in 
an  organic  connection.  This,  it  cannot  be  doubted,  is 
the  task  which  the  science  of  religion  is  now  called  to 
attempt.  What  every  one  with  any  interest  in  the 
subject  is  striving  after,  is  a  knowledge  of  the  religions 
of  the  world  not  as  isolated  systems  which,  though 
having  many  points  of  resemblance,  may  yet,  for  all 
we  know,  be  of  separate  and  independent  growth,  but 
as  connected  with  each  other  and  as  forming  parts 
of  one  whole.  Our  science,  in  fact,  is  seeking  to  grasp 
the  religions  of  the  world  as  manifestations  of  the 
religion  of  the  world. ^ 

In  rising  to  this  conception  of  its  task,  the  science 
of  religion  is  only  obeying  the  impulse  which  dominates 
every  department  of  study  in  modern  times.  What 
every  science  is  doing  is  to  seek  to  show  the  unity 
of  law  amid  the  multiplicity  of  the  phenomena  with 
which  it  has  to  deal,  to  gather  up  the  many  into  one, 
or  rather  to  show  how  the  one  has  given  rise  to  the 
many.  In  the  study  of  religion,  if  it  be  really  a 
science,  this  impulse  of  all  science  must  surely  be 
felt.  Here  also  we  must  cherish  the  conviction  that 
an  order  does  exist  amid  the  apparent  disorder,  if  we 
could  but  find  it.  We  must  believe  that  the  religious 
beliefs  and  practices  of  mankind  are  not  a  mere  chaos, 

'  The  above  statement  is  criticised  by  Mr.  L.  H.  Jordan  in  his  exc^lent 
work,  Comparative  Religion,  p.  485,  but  is  in  the  main  a  true  account 
of  what  has  taken  place.  Mr.  Jordan  strongly  holds  that  Comparative 
Religion  is  a  science  by  itself,  and  ought  to  be  distinguished  from  the 
History  of  Religion,  though  the  latter  is,  of  course,  its  necessary  foundation. 


6  History  of  Religion  part  i 

not  a  mere  incessant  outburst  of  unreason,  consistent 
only  in  that  it  has  appeared  in  every  age  and  every 
country  of  the  world,  but  that  they  form  a  cosmos, 
and  may  be  known,  if  we  take  the  right  way,  as  a 
part  of  human  life  from  which  reason  has  never  been 
absent,  and  in  which  a  growing  purpose  has  fulfilled 
and  still  fulfils  itself  Some  theories,  it  is  true,  from 
which  the  world  formerly  hoped  much,  are  not  now 
relied  on,  and  the  present  tendency  is  to  abstain  from 
any  general  doctrine  of  the  subject,  and  to  be  content 
with  careful  collection  and  arrangement  of  the  facts 
in  special  parts  of  the  field.  Caution  is  no  doubt 
most  needful  in  the  attempt  to  form  a  view  of  this 
great  study  as  a  whole.  Yet  something  of  this  kind 
is  possible,  and  is  beyond  all  doubt  much  called  for. 
It  is  the  aim  of  this  little  work  not  only  to  describe 
the  leading  features  of  the  great  religions,  but  also 
to  set  forth  some  of  the  results  which  appear  to  have 
been  reached  regarding  the  relation  in  which  these 
systems  stand  to  each  other. 

The  Growth  of  Religrion  Continuous. — We  shall  not 
pretend  to  set  out  on  this  enterprise  without  any 
assumptions.  The  first  and  principal  assumption  we 
make  is  that  in  religion    as   in  other  departments   of 

v/human  life  there  has  been  a  development  from  the 
beginning,  even  till  now,  and  that  the  growth  of 
religion  has  gone  on  according  to  the  ordinary  laws 
of  human  progress.  This  is  a  position  which,  begin 
the  study  at  whatever  point  he  may,  the  student  of 
this  subject  will  find  himself  compelled  to  take  up, 
if  he  is  not  to  renounce  altogether  the  idea  of  under- 
standing it  as  a  whole.  To  understand  anything  means, 
to  the  thought  of  the  present  day,  to  know  how  it  has 
come  to  be  what  it  is  ;  of  any  historical  phenomenon  at 
least  it  is  certain  that  it  cannot  be  understood  except 
by  tracing  its  history  up  to  the  root.  We  assume, 
therefore,   until   it    be   disproved,   that    in    this    as   in 

V'  other    departments    of    human    activity,    growth    has 


CHAP.    I 


Introduction 


been  continuous  from  the  first.  In  every  other  branch 
of  historical  study,  this  assumption  is  made.  The 
history  of  institutions-  is  traced  back  in  a  continuous 
Hne  to  an  age  before  there  was  any  family  or  any 
such  thing  as  property.  The  methods  by  which  men 
have  earned  their  subsistence  on  the  earth  are  known 
equally  far  back ;  and  there  is  no  break  in  the 
development  from  the  hooked  stick  to  the  steam 
plough.  And  should  it  not  be  the  same  in  religion  ? 
Here  also  shall  we  not  assume,  until  we  find  it  proved 
to  be  incorrect,  that  there  has  been  no  break   in  the 

/growth  of  ideas  and  practices  from  the  earliest  days 
till  now,  and  that  the  highest  religion  of  the  present 
day  is  organically  connected  with  that  religion  which 
man  had  at  first?  It  is,  indeed,  in  many  ways  far 
removed  from  the  earliest  religion,  but  what  was  most 
essential  in  the  earliest  belief  still  lives  in  it,  and  what 
was  fittest  to  survive  of  its  earliest  motives,  still  prompts 
its  worship.     Should  we  adopt  this  view,  we  shall  find 

.  many  of  the  difficulties  disappear  which  have  frequently 
stood  in  the  way  of  this  study.  When,  according  to 
the  new  tendency  that  seems  to  govern  all  modern 
thought,  institutions  and  beliefs  are  regarded  not  as 
fixed  things,  but  as  things  growing  from  something 
that  was  there  before,  and  tending  towards  something 
that  is  coming,  they  cease  to  arouse  contempt,  or 
jealousy,  or  hatred.  If  we  can  regard  religions  as 
stages  in  the  evolution  of  religion,  then  we  have  no 
motive  either  to  depreciate  or  unduly  to  extol  any 
of  them.  The  earlier  stages  of  the  development  will 
have  a  peculiar  interest  for  us,  just  as  we  look  with 
affection  on  the  home  of  our  ancestors  even  though 
we  should  not  choose  to  dwell  there.  We  shall  not 
divide  religions  into  the  true  one,  Christianity,  and 
the  false  ones,  all  the  rest ;  no  religion  will  be  to  us 
a  mere  superstition,  nor  shall  we  regard  any  as  un- 
guided  by  God.  Feeling  that  we  cannot  understand 
our   own   religion  aright  without  understanding   those 


8  Hisiojy  of  Religion  part  i 

\/^out  of  which  it  has  been  built  up,  we  shall  value  these 
others  for  the  part  they  have  played  in  the  great 
movement,  and  our  own  most  of  all,  without  which 
they  could  not  be  made  perfect.  In  the  light  of 
this  principle  of  growth  we  shall  find  good  in  the 
lowest,  and  shall  see  that  the  good  and  true  rather 
than  the  evil  and  false,  furnish  the  ultimate  meaning 
of  even  the  poorest  systems. 

We  start  then  with  the  assumption  that  religion  is 
a  thing  which  has  developed  from  the  first,  as  law 
has,  or  as  art  has  ;  and  the  best  method  we  can  follow, 
if  it  should  prove  practicable,  will  be  to  follow  its 
movement  from  the  beginning.  We  must  not  presume 
to  hope  that  everything  will  be  made  clear,  or  that 
we  shall  meet  with  no  religious  phenomena  to  which 
we  cannot  assign  their  place  in  the  development.  We 
must  remember  that  ground  is  often  lost  as  well  as 
won  in  human  history,  and  that  in  religions  as  in 
nations  degeneration  frequently  occurs  as  well  as 
progress.  We  must  not  be  too  sure  that  we  shall  be 
able  to  find  any  plain  path  leading  through  the 
immeasurable  forests  of  man's  religious  sentiments 
and  practices.  Yet  we  may  at  least  expect  to  find 
evidence  of  the  direction  which  on  the  whole  the 
growth  of  religion  has  followed. 

Preliminary  Definition  of  Relig-ion. — But,  before 
we  can  set  out  on  this  inquiry,  we  are  met  by  the 
question,  What  is  it  that  we  suppose  to  have  been 
thus  developed  ?  In  order  to  trace  any  process  of 
evolution  it  is  necessary  to  define  that  which  is 
evolved  ;  for  it  belongs  to  the  very  idea  of  evolution 
that  the  identity  of  the  subject  of  it  is  not  changed 
on  the  way  up,  but  that  the  germ  and  the  finished 
product  are  the  same  entity,  only  differing  from  each 
other  in  that  the  one  has  still  to  grow  while  the  other 
is  grown.  Futile  were  it  indeed  to  sketch  a  history 
of  religion  with  the  savage  at  one  end  of  it  and  the 
Christian  thinker  at  the  other,  if  it  could  be  said  that 


CHAP.   I 


Introduction 


in  no  point  did  the  religion  of  the  savage  and  that 
of  the  Christian  coincide,  but  that  the  product  was 
a  thing  of  entirely  different  nature  from  the  germ. 
It  seems  necessary,  therefore,  in  the  first  place,  to 
say  what  that  is,  of  which  we  are  to  attempt  the 
history ;  or  in  other  words,  to  say  what  we  mean  by 
religion. 

It  must  not  be  forgotten  that  an  adequate  definition 
of  a  thing  which  is  growing  can  only  be  reached  when 
the  growth  is  complete.  During  its  growth  it  is  show- 
ing what  it  is,  and  its  higher  as  well  as  its  lower  mani- 
festations are  part  of  its  nature.  The  world  has  not  yet 
found  out  completely,  but  is  still  in  the  course  of  find- 
ing out,  what  religion  is.  Any  definition  propounded 
at  this  stage  must,  therefore,  be  of  an  elementary  and 
provisional  character.  I  propose  then  as  a  working 
definition  of  religion  in  the  meantime,  that  it  is  "The 
worship  of  higher  powers."  This  appears  at  first 
sight  a  very  meagre  account  of  the  matter ;  but  if  we 
consider  what  it  implies,  we  shall  find  it  is  not  so  meagre. 
In  the  first  place  it  involves  an  element  of  belief  No 
one  will  worship  higher  powers  unless  he  believes  that 
such  powers  exist.  This  is  the  intellectual  factor.  Not 
that  the  intellectual  is  distinguished  in  early  forms  of 
religion  from  the  other  factors,  any  more  than  grammar 
is  distinguished  by  early  man  as  an  element  of  language. 
But  something  intellectual,  some  creed,  is  present 
implicitly  even  in  the  earliest  worships.  Should  there 
be  no  belief  in  higher  powers,  true  worship  cannot 
continue.  If  it  be  continued  in  outward  act,  it  has  lost 
reality  to  the  mind  of  the  worshipper,  and  the  result 
is  an  apparent  or  a  sham  religion,  a  worship  devoid 
of  one  of  the  essential  conditions  of  religion.  This  is 
true  at  every  stage.  But  in  the  second  place,  these 
powers  which  are  worshipped  are  "higher."  Religion 
has  respect,  not  to  beings  men  regard  as  on  a  level 
with  themselves  or  even  beneath  themselves,  but  to 
beings  in  some  way  above  and  beyond  themselves,  and 


lO  History  of  Religion  part  i 

whom  they  are  disposed  to  approach  with  reverence. 
When  objects  appear  to  be  worshipped  for  which  the 
worshipper  feels  contempt,  and  which  a  moment  after- 
wards he  will  maltreat  or  throw  away,  there  also  one  of 
the  essential  conditions  is  absent,  and  such  worship 
must  be  judged  to  fall  short  of  religion.  There  may  no 
doubt  be  some  religion  in  it ;  the  object  he  worships 
may  appear  to  the  savage,  in  whose  mind  there  is  little 
continuity,  at  one  moment  to  be  higher  than  himself 
and  the  next  moment  to  be  lower  ;  but  the  result  of 
the  whole  is  something  less  than  religion.  And  in  the 
third  place  these  higher  powers  are  worshipped.  That 
is  to  say,  religion  is  not  only  belief  in  the  higher  powers 
but  it  is  a  cultivating  of  relations  with  them,  it  is  a 
practical  activity  continuously  directed  to  these  beings. 
It  is  not  only  a  thinking  but  also  a  doing  ;  this  also 
is  essential  to  it.  When  worship  is  discontinued, 
religion  ceases  ;  a  principle  indeed  not  to  be  applied  too 
narrowly,  since  the  apparent  cessation  of  worship  may 
be  merely  its  transition  to  another,  possibly  a  higher 
form  ;  but  religion  is  not  present  unless  there  be  not 
only  a  belief  in  higher  powers  but  an  effort  of  one  kind 
or  another  to  keep  on  good  terms  with  them. 

Criticism  of  other  Definitions. — What  has  now  been 
said  will  enable  us  to  judge  of  several  of  the  definitions 
of  religion  which  have  been  put  before  the  world  in 
recent  years.  Without  going  back  to  the  definitions 
offered  by  philosophers  who  wrote  before  the  scientific 
study  of  our  subject  had  begun,  and  limiting  ourselves 
to  those  which  have  been  propounded  in  the  interests 
of  our  science,  we  notice  that  several  make  religion  con- 
sist in  an  intellectual  activity.^     Thus  Mr.  Max  Mijller^ 

^  Though  Mr.  Tylor  defines  religion  as  the  "belief  in  spiritual  beings," 
he  is  not  to  be  charged  with  making  it  too  much  a  matter  of  the  intellect. 
He  uses  the  word  belief  in  a  wide  sense  as  including  the  practices  it 
involves.  In  the  word  "spiritual,"  however,  Mr.  Tylor  brings  into  the 
definition  his  theory  of  Animism,  and  thus  makes  it  unserviceable  for  those 
who  do  not  adopt  that  theory. 

-  Introauction  to  the  Science  of  Religion,  1882,  p.   13.     The  definition 


CHAP.  I  *        Introduction  1 1 

says  that  "  Religion  is  a  mental  faculty  or  disposi- 
tion which  independent  of,  nay,  in  spite  of,  sense  and 
reason,  enables  man  to  apprehend  the  Infinite  under 
different  names,  and  under  varying  disguises.  Without 
that  faculty  ...  no  religion  would  be  possible."  To 
this  definition  there  are  various  strong  objections.  It 
implies  that  there  is  only  one  way  in  which  men  come 
to  believe  in  higher  beings  ;  they  arrive  at  that  belief  by 
finding  something  which  transcends  them  and  which 
they  cannot  understand  ;  i.e.  by  an  intellectual  process. 
It  may  be  doubted  whether  the  sense  of  disappointment 
with  the  finite  is  the  only  road,  or  even  a  common  road, 
to  belief  in  gods.  Mr.  Miiller's  omission,  moreover, 
from  his  definition,  of  the  practical  side  of  religion, 
of  the  element  of  worship,  is  a  fatal  objection  to  it. 
Belief  and  worship  are  inseparable  sides  of  religion, 
which  does  not  come  fully  into  existence  till  both  are 
present.  In  a  later  work^  Mr.  Miiller  admits  the  force 
of  this  objection,  urged  by  several  scholars,  to  his 
definition,  and  modifies  it  as  follows  :  "  Religion  con- 
sists in  the  perception  of  the  infinite  under  such  mani- 
festations as  are  able  to  influence  the  moral  character 
of  man."  In  this  form  the  definition  recognises  that 
worship,  the  practical  activity  in  which  man's  moral 
character  shows  itself  in  fear,  gratitude,  love,  contrition, 
is  an  essential  part  of  religion,  and  that  perceptions  of 
the  infinite  apart  from  this  are  only  one  side  of  it.  His 
original  definition,  however,  has  played  too  large  a  part 
in  the  history  of  our  subject  to  be  left  without  careful 
notice.  The  same  objection  applies  to  Mr.  Herbert 
Spencer's  account  of  the  matter.  Mr.  Spencer  finds  the 
basis  of  all  religion  in  the  inscrutableness  of  the  Power 
which  the  universe  manifests  to  us.  The  belief  common 
to  all  religions,  he  holds,  is  the  presence  of  something 

was  put  forward  in   the  year  1873,  and  in  his  lectures  on  the  Origin  of 
Religion,  1882,  Mr.   Miiller  adhered  to  it  as  being  in  the  main  sound 
(P-  23). 
^  Natural  Religion,  1888,  pp.  188,  193. 


12  History  of  Religion  part  i 

which  passes  comprehension.  The  idea  of  the  absolute 
and  unconditioned  he  regards  as  accompanying  all  our 
consciousness  of  things  conditioned  and  limited,  and  as 
being  not  a  negative  notion,  not  merely  the  denial  of 
limits,  but  a  positive  one.  The  unconditioned  is  that  of 
which  all  our  thoughts  and  ideas  are  manifestations,  but 
which  we  never  can  know,  with  regard  to  which  we 
cannot  affirm  anything  but  that  it  exists.  This  defini- 
tion like  that  last  noticed  traces  religion  to  the  defects 
in  man's  knowledge,  and  rather  to  a  negative  than  a 
positive  element  in  his  experience.  It  also  comes 
under  the  objection  that  it  traces  religion  rather  to 
an  intellectual  than  a  practical  motive,  and  omits  the 
element  of  worship. 

Other  scholars  have  explained  religion  as  the  action 
of  the  curiosity  of  the  human  mind,  of  that  impulse 
which  prompts  man  to  investigate  the  causes  of  things, 
and  specially  to  seek  for  the  first  cause  of  all  things. 
Here  we  touch  what  is  certainly  to  be  recognised  as  an 
invariable  feature  of  religion  ;  it  always  professes  to 
explain  the  world,  and  to  bring  unity  to  man's  mind  by 
clearing  up  the  problems  which  perplex  him,  and  afford- 
ing him  a  commanding  point  of  view,  from  which  he 
may  see  all  the  parts  of  the  world  and  of.  life  fall  into 
their  places.  This,  however,  does  not  tell  us  what 
religion  itself  is.  This  curiosity,  this  impulse  to  know, 
are  not  specifically  religious ;  they  belong  rather  to 
philosophy.  Other  motives  than  those  connected  with 
knowledge  entered  from  the  first  into  man's  worship. 
Curiosity  impelled  him  to  seek  the  first  cause  of  things ; 
in  religion  he  saw  something  that  promised  to  explain 
the  world  to  him,  and  to  explain  him  to  himself.  But 
it  was  something  more  than  curiosity  that  made  him 
regard  that  cause,  when  found,  as  a  god,  and  pay  it 
reverence  and  sacrifice.  What  is  the  motive  of  worship  ? 
Wonder,  no  doubt,  is  always  present  in  it,  but  what  is 
there  in  it  beyond  wonder  ?  No  definition  of  religion 
can  be  regarded  as  complete  in  which  the  motive  of 


CHAP.  I  Introduction  13 

worship  is  left  undetermined.  That  is  of  the  essence 
of  the  matter.  There  must  be  a  moral  as  well  as  an 
intellectual  quality  which  is  characteristic  of  religion. 
What  is  religion  morally  ?  Acts  of  worship  may  be 
specified  in  which  every  conceivable  moral  quality  seeks 
to  express  itself.  The  most  contradictory  motives, 
pride  and  anger  and  revenge,  as  well  as  fear  or  hunger 
or  contrition,  enter  into  such  acts.  But  if  religion  is 
a  matter  of  sentiment  as  well  as  of  outward  posture, 
these  acts  of  worship  cannot  all  be  equally  entitled  to 
the  name,  and  something  is  wanted  to  complete  our 
definition. 

Fuller  Deflnition. — Let  us  add  what  seems  to  be 
wanting ;  and  say  that  religion  is  the  "  worship  of 
higher  powers  from  a  sense  of  need " !  This  will 
remind  the  reader  of  Schleiermacher's  definition — "a 
sense  of  infinite  dependence."  It  was  always  objected 
to  that  definition,  that  it  made  religion  no  more  than 
a  sentiment,  a  mood,  but  that  besides  this,  it  is  both 
belief  and  action.  But  the  truth  Schleiermacher  urged 
was  one  of  essential  importance  to  the  matter.  Belief 
in  gods  and  acts  of  worship  paid  to  them  do  not  con- 
stitute religion  unless  the  sentiment,  the  sense  of  need, 
be  also  there.  These  three  together,  feeling,  belief,  and 
will  expressing  itself  in  action,  constitute  religion  both 
in  the  lowest  and  in  the  highest  levels  of  civilisation. 

A  belief  must  exist,  to  take  a  step  farther,  that  the 
being  worshipped  is  capable  of  supplying  what  the 
worshipper  requires.  Men  do  not  pray  nor  bring 
offerings  to  beings  they  suppose  to  be  incapable  of 
attending  to  them,  or  powerless  to  do  them  any  good 
or  evil.  It  is  implied  in  every  act  of  worship  that 
the  being  addressed  is  a  power  who  is  able  to  do 
for  the  worshipper  what  he  cannot  do  for  himself.  It 
is  his  inability  to  help  himself  or  to  supply  his  own 
needs  that  sends  the  worshipper  to  his  god,  who  has 
a  power  he  himself  has  not.  If  he  could  help  himself 
he   would    not    need   religion,   if    his   life   were   either 


14  History  of  Religion  part  i 

perfectly  prosperous  and  even,  so  that  there  was 
nothing  left  to  wish  for,  or  perfectly  miserable  and 
unsuccessful,  so  that  there  was  no  room  for  hope,  he* 
would  not  resort  to  higher  powers ;  but  neither  of 
these  two  being  the  case,  his  life  on  the  contrary  being 
a  mixed  lot  of  good  and  evil,  in  which  there  are 
blessings  his  own  forces  cannot  secure,  and  dangers 
from  which  no  efforts  of  his  own  can  save  him,  and 
the  belief  having  arisen  within  him,  in  what  way  we 
need  not  now  inquire,  that  higher  powers  exist  who 
can,  if  they  will,  defend  and  prosper  him,  in  this  way 
he  has  religion,  he  keeps  up  intercourse  with  higher 
powers.  And  thus  religion  is  not  necessarily,  even  in 
its  most  primitive  form,  a  manifestation  of  mere  selfish- 
ness. Though  gifts  are  offered  which  are  expected  to 
please  the  higher  beings,  and  though  benefits  are  asked 
of  which  the  worshipper  is  urgently  in  need,  such 
transactions  are  not  necessarily  sordid  any  more  than 
similar  applications  between  human  beings,  between  two 
friends,  or  between  a  parent  and  a  child.  Even  the 
savage  living  in  entire  isolation,  at  war  with  every  one 
and  conscious  of  no  needs  but  those  of  food  and  shelter, 
will  not  seek  benefits  from  his  god  without  some  feeling 
of  attachment,  nor  without  some  sense  of  strengthened 
friendship  should  the  benefit  be  granted  him.  When 
once  this  sense  of  friendship  has  arisen,  religion  is 
present,  the  man  has  come  to  be  in  living  relation 
with  a  higher  power,  whom  he  conceives,  no  doubt, 
after  his  own  likeness,  but  nevertheless  as  greater 
than  he  is. 

This  then  is  what  we  conceive  to  be  the  essence  of 
religion — the  worship  of  higher  powers,  from  a  sense 
of  need  ;  and  it  is  of  this  that  we  are  to  trace  the 
history  though  only  in  the  barest  outlines.  The 
definition  itself  suggests  in  what  way  the  development 
may  be  expected  to  work  itself  out.  According  as 
the  needs  change  their  character,  of  which  men  are 
conscious,   so    will    their    religion   also    change.      The 


CHAP.  I  Introduction  15 

gradual  elevation  and  refinement  of  human  needs,  in 
the  growth  of  civilisation,  is  the  motive  force  of  the 
development  of  religion.  The  deities  themselves,  their 
past  history  and  their  present  character,  the  sacrifices 
offered  to  them,  and  the  benefits  aimed  at  in  inter- 
course with  them,  all  must  grow  up  as  man  himself 
grows,  from  rudeness  to  refinement  and  from  caprice 
to  order.  At  its  lowest,  religion  is  perhaps  an  indi- 
vidual affair  between  the  savage  and  his  god,  and  has 
to  do  with  material  individual  needs.  At  a  higher 
stage  (not  always  nor  even  commonly  later  in  time) 
it  is  the  affair  of  a  family,  of  a  tribe,  or  of  a  com- 
bination of  tribes,  and  with  each  of  these  extensions 
the  requests  grow  broader  and  less  personal  which 
have  to  be  presented  to  the  deity  ;  the  religion  be- 
comes a  common  worship  for  public  ends.  The  needs 
of  the  nomad  are  other  than  those  of  the  settled 
agriculturist,  and  those  of  the  countryman  differ  from 
those  of  the  citizen,  and  those  of  the  Laplander  from 
those  of  the  Negro,  and  these  differences  will  be 
reflected  in  the  aspect  of  the  deities  and  in  the  observ- 
ances celebrated  in  their  honour.  When  art  begins  to 
stir  within  a  nation,  the  gods  have  to  adapt  themselves 
to  the  new  taste.  As  society  grows  more  humane, 
cruel  and  sanguinary  religious  observances,  though  they 
may  long  keep  a  hold  of  the  ignorant  and  excitable, 
lose  their  support  in  the  public  conscience  and  are 
sentenced  to  change  or  to  extinction.  And  when  a 
new  consciousness  of  personal  human  dignity  springs 
up,  and  men  come  to  feel  the  infinite  value  and  the 
infinite  responsibility  of  personal  life,  the  old  public 
religion  is  felt  to  be  cold  and  distant,  and  religious 
services  of  a  more  personal  and  more  intimate  kind 
are  sought  for. 

Thus  peligrion  and  civilisation  advance  together; 
according  as  the  civilisation  is  in  any  people,  so  is  its 
religion.  It  is  vain,  broadly  speaking,  to  look  for  the 
combination  of  primitive  m.anners  and  customs  with  a 


1 6  History  of  Religion  part  i 

lofty  spiritual  faith.  The  converse  it  is  true  may  often 
seem  to  take  place.  Religion,  or  rather  religious  creeds 
and  practices,  often  seem  to  lag  behind  civilisation  and 
to  maintain  themselves  long  after  the  reason  and  the 
conscience  of  a  people  has  condemned  them.  That  is 
because  religion  is  what  man  values  most  in  his  life, 
and  he  is  loath  to  change  observances  in  which  his 
affections  are  powerfully  engaged.  But  religion  must 
reflect  the  ideals  of  the  society  in  which  it  exists  ;  the 
needs  which  the  society  feels  at  the  time  must  be  the 
burden  of  its  prayers ;  its  sacrifices  must  be  such  as 
the  general  sentiment  allows ;  its  gods,  to  retain  the 
allegiance  of  the  community,  must  alter  with  time  and 
prove  themselves  alive  and  in  touch  with  their  people. 
And  if  it  be  the  case  that  civilisation  has  on  the  whole 
advanced  upwards  from  the  first;  if,  as  Mr.  Tylor  assures 
us,i  man  began  with  his  lowest  and  has,  in  spite  of 
occasional  declines,  on  the  whole  been  improving  ever 
since,  then  of  religion  also  the  same  will  be  true.  It 
also  will  be  found  to  begin  with  its  rudest  forms  and 
gradually  to  grow  better.  Religion  in  fact  is  the  inner 
side  of  civilisation,  and  expresses  the  essential  spirit  of 
human  life  in  various  ages  and  nations.  The  religion 
of  a  race  is  the  truest  expression  of  its  character,  and 
reflects  most  faithfully  its  attitude  and  aims  and  policy. 
The  religion  of  an  age  shows  what  at  that  time  con- 
stituted the  object  of  man's  aspiration  and  endeavour, 
as  older  hopes  grew  pale  and  new  hopes  rose  on  his 
sight.  Thus  the  study  of  the  religions  of  the  world  is 
the  study  of  the  very  soul  of  its  history ;  it  is  the  study 
of  the  desires  and  aspirations  which  throughout  the 
course  of  history  men  have  not  been  ashamed,  nay, 
which  they  have  been  proud  and  determined  to  con- 
fess. No  more  fascinating  study  could  possibly  engage 
us.  It  is  true  that  the  requirements  for  the  adequate 
treatment  of  the  subject  are  such  as  few  indeed  can 
hope  to  possess.     He  who  would  treat  the  history  of 

^  Primiiive  Cu/lvre,  cliap.  ii. 


CHAP.  I  Introduction  17 

religion  aright  ought  to  know  thoroughly  the  whole 
of  the  history  of  civilisation  ;  he  should  have  explored 
the  vast  domain  of  savage  life  and  thought  that  has 
recently  been  opened  up  to  us,  and  he  should  be 
at  home  in  every  century  of  every  nation  from  the 
beginning  of  history.  At  a  time  like  this,  when  new 
light  is  being  poured  every  year  on  every  part  of  our 
subject,  no  statement  of  it  can  be  more  than  tentative 
and  partial.  The  student  will  be  directed  at  each  step 
to  sources  of  fuller  information. 


Books  Recommended.     (General) 

Outlines  of  the  History  of  Religion  to  the  Spread  of  the  Universal  Religions. 
By  Dr.  C.  P.  Tiele.  Translation.  In  Trlibner's  Oriental  Series. 
Very  condensed  and  in  somewhat  technical  language  ;  but  the  work 
of  one  of  the  greatest  masters  of  the  subject.  A  full  Bibliography  is 
appended  to  the  various  chapters. 

Lehrbiich  der  Religionsgeschichte,  von  P.  D.  Chantepie  de  la  Saussaye. 
Freiburg,  1887.  The  English  translation  has  an  altered  title,  viz. 
Manual  of  the  Science  of  Religion,  Longmans,  189 1.  The  Third 
Edition  (1905)  is  practically  a  different  book,  and  consists  of  studies, 
each  by  an  expert,  of  the  various  religions. 

Religious  Systems  of  the  World  {Sonnenschem,  1892)  is  a  full  collection  of 
descriptions  of  the  various  religions,  by  persons  specially  acquainted 
with  them  ;  of  very  unequal  merit. 

Mr.  Max  Mliller's  works  cited  above,  also  his  more  recent  volumes  of 
Gifford  Lectures,  contain  a  number  of  general  discussions. 

See  also  the  Giftbrd  Lectures  of  the  late  Mr.  Ed.  Caird,  and  the  late  Prof. 
Tiele.    ■ 

Pfleiderer's  Philosophy  of  Religion,  4  vols. 

Punjer,  Geschichte  der  christl.  Religionsphilosophie,  2  vols.  1880-83. 

Rauwenhoff,  Wijsbegeerde  van  den  Godsdienst,  2  vols.  1887  (also  in 
German). 

M.  Jastrow,  The  Study  of  Religion,  igor. 

L.  H.Jordan,  Comparative  Religion,  its  Origin  and  Growth,  1905. 

Revue  de  fhistoire  des  religions,  edited  by  M.  J.  Reville. 

Archiv  flir  Religionswissenschaft,  edited  by  Alb.  Dieterich. 

Reinach,  Orpheus,  Histoire  Gin^ralc  des  Religions,  1909. 

Hastings,  Encyclopedia  of  Religion  and  Ethics,  vol.  i.  A- Art,  1908. 

B 


1 8  History  of  Religion  part  i 

The  New  Schaff-Heizog  Encyclopedia  of  Religious  Knowledge  has  excellent 
articles  on  the  various  religions. 

Louis  H.  Jordan,  Co>nJ>arative  Religion,  1905.    An  account  of  the  progress 
of  our  study,  with  extensive  bibliography. 

Galloway,  The  Principles  of  Religious  Development,  a  psychological  and 
philosophical  study,   1909. 

Proceedings  of  the  Oxford  Inter-national  Congress  of  the  History  of  Religions, 
1908.  2  vols.  The  addresses  of  the  Presidents  of  the  Sections  give  a 
record  of  the  most  recent  progress  in  every  part  of  our  study.  Of 
these  see,  for  this  chapter,  Count  Goblet  d'Alviella,  vol.  ii.  pp.  365  sqq. 
on  the  Method  and  Scope  of  the  History  of  Religion. 


CHAPTER   II 

THE   BEGINNING   OF   RELIGION 

Orig-in  of  Civilisation. — Every  inhabited  country,  we 
are  assured  by  ethnologists,  was  once  peopled  by 
savages  ;  the  atone  age  everywhere  came  before  the 
age  of  metals.  Antecedent  to  every  civilisation  that 
has  sprung  up  on  the  earth  is  this  dim  period,  the 
period  of  the  cave  dwellers  and  afterwards  of  the  lake 
dwellers.  There  can  be  no  chronology  nor  any  exact 
knowledge  of  these  early  men  who  lived  by  hunting, 
with  stone  weapons,  animals  which  are  now  extinct. 
How  from  his  earliest  and  most  helpless  state  man 
came  in  various  ways  to  help  himself;  how  he  discovered 
fire,  how  he  improved  his  weapons  and  invented  tools, 
how  he  learned  to  tame  certain  of  the  animals  on  which 
he  had  formerly  made  war,  and  instead  of  wandering 
about  the  world  came  to  settle  in  one  place  and  till 
the  soil,  and  how  family  life  came  to  be  instituted,  and 
the  father  as  well  as  the  mother  to  act  as  guardian  to 
the  children ;  all  that  is  a  vast  history,  which  must  be 
read  in  its  own  place.  Immense,  indeed,  were  the 
labours  early  man  had  to  undergo,  in  wrestling  his 
way  up  from  a  life  like  that  of  the  brutes  to  a  life  in 
which  his  own  distinctive  nature  could  begin  to  display 
itself 

It  was  from  the  savag-e  state  that  civilisation  was 
by  degrrees  produced.  The  theory  that  man  was 
originally  civilised  and  humane,  and  that  it  was  by 
a  fall,  by  a  degeneration  from  that  earliest  condition, 

19 


20  History  of  Religion  part  i 

that  the  state  of  savagery  made  its  appearance,  is  now 
generally  abandoned.  There  may  be  instances  of  such 
degeneration  having  taken  place ;  but  on  the  whole, 
the  conviction  now  obtains  that  civilisation  is  the  result 
of  progressive  development,  and  was  the  result  man 
conquered  for  himself  by  his  age-long  struggles  with 
his  environment.  That  development  did  not  take  place 
in  all  lands  alike.  In  some  it  proceeded  faster  than 
in  others,  and  its  advances  were  due  oftener  to  propaga- 
tion from  without,  than  to  unaided  growth  from  within ; 
as  one  race  came  in  contact  with  another  new  ideas  were 
aroused  of  the  possibilities  of  life  in  various  directions. 
In  some  lands  the  development  has  ^scarcely  taken 
place  at  all.  There  remain  to  this  day  races  who  are 
judged  to  be  still  in  the  primitive  condition.  Not 
all  savage  tribes  are  thought  to  be  in  that  condition. 
The  bushmen  of  Australia,  the  Andaman  Islanders, 
and  others,^  are  found  to  be  in  such  a  state  in  point 
of  habits  and  acquirements  that  they  must  be  considered 
as  races  which  have  fallen  from  a  higher  position,  and 
present  instances  of  degeneration.  But  a  multitude 
of  savage  tribes  remain  in  all  quarters  of  the  globe 
who  do  not  appear  to  have  been  thus  enfeebled,  and 
who  are  held  to  be  still  in  that  state  in  which  the 
dwellers  in  all  parts  of  the  earth  were  before  what  we 
now  call  civilisation  began.  They  are  races  among 
whom  civilisation  did  not  spring  up,  as  it  did  in  China 
or  in  Peru.  From  these  races  we  may  learn  in  a 
general  way,  though  in  this  great  caution  is  required, 
what  the  ancestors  of  all  the  civilised  nations  were. 
It  confirms  this  conclusion  that  we  find  in  every 
civilised  nation  a  number  of  phenomena,  practices, 
beliefs,  stories,  which  the  mental  condition  of  the 
nation  as  we  know  it  does  not  account  for,  which 
manifestly  are  not  outgrowths  of  the  civilisation,  but 
relics  of  an  older  state  of  life,  which  civilisation  has 

^  Instances  in  Tylor,  Primitivt  Culture^  chap,  ii.,  where  the  theory 
of  degeneration  is  fully  discussed. 


CHAP.  II  The  Beginmng  of  Religion  2 1 

not  entirely  obliterated  ;  and  that  these  practices, 
beliefs,  and  stories  can  be  exactly  matched  by  those 
of  the  savage  races.  The  inference  is  drawn  that 
civilisation  has  sprung  from  savage  life,  that,  as  Mr. 
Tylor  says,  "  the  savage  state  represents  the  early 
condition  of  mankind,  out  of  which  the  higher  culture 
has  gradually  been  developed  by  causes  still  in  opera- 
tion." To  trace  the  history  of  civilisation,  therefore, 
it  is  necessary  to  go  back  to  the  earliest  knowledge  we 
have  of  human  life  upon  the  earth,  and  to  ask  what 
germs  and  rudiments  can  be  discovered  among  savages 
of  law,  of  institutions,  of  arts  and  sciences.  Such  works 
as  Maine's  Ancient  Law,  Tylor's  Primitive  Culture, 
Lubbock's  Origin  of  Civilisation,  show  how  fruitful  this 
method  is,  and  what  floods  of  light  it  pours  on  the 
history  of  society. 

Now  what  is  true  of  civilisation  generally  will  be  true 
also  of  religion,  which  is  one  of  its  principal  elements. 
If  every  country  was  once  inhabited  by  savages,  then 
the  origrinal  relig'ion  of  every  country  must  have  been 
a  religion  of  savages  ;  and  in  the  later  religion  there 
will  be  features  which  have  been  carried  on  from  the 
earlier  one.  This,  indeed,  we  must  in  any  case  expect 
to  find.  No  new  religion  can  enter  on  its  career  on 
a  soil  quite  unprepared,  on  which  no  gods  have  been 
worshipped  before.  (That  would  imply  that  there  had 
been  races  in  the  world  without  religion,  on  which  we 
shall  speak  presently.)  A  new  faith  has  always  to  begin 
by  adjusting  itself  to  that  which  it  found  in  possession 
of  the  soil,  and  it  always  adopts  what  it  can  of  the 
old  system.  We  should  expect  then  that  the  great 
religions  of  the  world  should  exhibit  features  which 
do  not  belong  to  their  own  structure,  but  which  they 
inherited,  with  or  against  their  will,  from  their  un- 
civilised predecessors.  And  that  is  the  case,  as  we 
shall  see  afterwards,  with  all  the  great  religions.  They 
are  all  full  of  survivals  of  the  savage  state.  The  old 
religious  associations  cling  to  the  face  of  a  land  anc| 


22  History  of  Religion  part  i 

refuse  to  be  uprooted,  whatever  changes  take  place 
among  the  gods  above.  Superstitious  practices  continue 
among  a  race  long  after  a  truth  has  been  preached 
there  with  which  they  are  entirely  inconsistent.  Stories 
are  long  told  about  the  gods,  quite  out  of  keeping  with 
their  character  in  the  theology  of  the  new  faith,  point- 
ing to  a  time  when  not  so  much  was  expected  of  a 
god.  In  Mr.  Lang's  Myth,  Ritual,  and  Reiigion,  the 
reader  will  find  an  admirable  collection  of  material 
showing  how  the  popular  elements  of  an  old  religion 
survive  in  a  new  one  in  which  they  are  quite  out  of 
place.  There  is  none  of  the  great  religions  to  which 
this  does  not  apply. 

Now,  if  it  be  the  case  that  each  of  the  great  religions 
has  been  built  upon  a  primitive  religion  formerly  occupy- 
ing the  same  ground,  it  might  appear  that  we  must,  in 
order  to  understand  any  of  the  great  religions,  study 
first,  in  each  case,  the  savage  system  which  it  super- 
seded. It  would  be  a  serious  prospect  for  the  student 
if  he  had  to  make  a  separate  study  of  a  set  of  savage 
beliefs  as  an  approach  to  each  of  the  ten  or  twelve 
great  religions.  But  this,  as  we  shall  see  afterwards, 
is  not  the  case.  There  is  a  great  family  likeness  in 
the  religions  of  savages,  and  we  may  even  allow  our- 
selves to  speak  not  of  the  religions  but  of  the  religion 
of  early  races.  In  the  next  chapter  an  attempt  will 
be  made  to  describe  that  religion  ;  but  we  may  say 
here  that  there  are  some  features  which  are  generally, 
though  by  no  means  always  found  in  it,  and  that  these 
features  may  be  regarded  for  practical  purposes  as  the 
religion  of  the  primitive  world,  which  everywhere  was 
the  forerunner  of  the  great  systems.  This  is  the  jungle, 
as  it  were,  overspreading  all  the  early  world,  out  of 
which  like  giant  trees  the  great  religions  arose,  and 
from  which  they  derived  and  still  derive  a  nourish- 
ment they  cannot  disown.  Indeed,  we  may  go  much 
farther.  In  some  of  their  leading  doctrines,  the  great 
religions    show    the    most    striking    affinity    with    one 


CHAP.  II  The  Beginning  of  Religion  23 

another.  China  and  Egypt  have  some  doctrines  in 
common  which  are  also  found  in  the  religion  of  the 
Incas;  the  Aryan  and  the  Semitic  religions  know  them 
too.  Should  these  doctrines  be  found  in  the  religion 
of  savages,  it  will  at  least  be  a  question  whether  the 
great  religions  all  alike  borrowed  and  developed  them 
from  that  source,  or  whether  any  other  explanation  of 
the  case  can  be  found.  Evidently  we  cannot  make 
any  progress  with  our  subject  till  we  have  taken  a 
general  view  of  this  religion  of  savages  and  come  to 
some  conclusions  regarding  it. 

A  few  words  must  be  said,  by  way  of  preface  to  this 
subject,  on  the  mental  habits  of  early  races.  V/e 
cannot  hope  to  understand  the  thoughts  of  those  people 
without  knowing  how  they  came  to  have  such  thoughts, 
how  they  were  accustomed  to  think.  Now  of  the  savage 
we  may  say  that  he  is  just  like  a  child  who  has  not 
yet  learned  to  think  correctly,  or  to  know  things  truly. 
He  is  making  all  kinds  of  experiments  in  thought,  and 
being  led  into  all  sorts  of  errors  and  confusion  ;  and  if 
the  child  takes  years,  the  savage  may  take  millenniums, 
to  get  free  from  these.  He  does  not  know  the  differ- 
ence between  one  thing  and  another,  between  himself 
and  the  lower  animals,  or  between  an  animal  and  a 
water-spout.  He  does  not  know  how  far  things  are 
away  from  him,  nor  what  makes  them  move  and  act 
as  they  do  ;  why,  for  example,  the  sun  and  moon  go 
round  the  sky,  or  why  the  wind  blows.  He  cannot 
tell  why  things  have  this  or  that  peculiar  appearance; 
why,  for  example,  the  rabbit  has  no  tail,  why  the  sky 
is  red  in  the  morning,  why  some  stones  are  like  men. 
And  he  wants  to  know  all  these  things,  and  is  for  ever 
asking  questions.  But  almost  any  answer  will  do  for 
him,  the  first  explanation  that  turns  up  is  accepted; 
and  while  a  child  finds  out  pretty  soon  if  he  has  been 
cold  wrong,  the  savage  is  so  ignorant  that  he  cannot  see 
the  absurdest  explanation  to  be  false,  but  sticks  to  it 
seriously  and  goes  on  using  it.     There  is  no  consistency 


24  History  of  Religion  part  i 

in  the  contents  of  his  mind,  and  inconsistency  does 
not  distress  him.  He  has  no  classes  and  orders  of 
things,  but  considers  each  thing  by  itself  as  it  occurs, 
without  putting  it  in  its  place  with  reference  to  other 
things.  He  has  no  idea  of  what  is  possible  and  what 
is  impossible ;  these  words  in  fact  would  have  no  mean- 
ing for  him,  since  he  is  not  aware  of  any  laws  by  which 
events  are  governed.  His  imagination,  accordingly,  is 
not  under  any  restraint ;  he  hits  upon  all  kinds  of 
grotesque  theories,  and,  having  no  critical  faculty  to 
test  them,  he  repeats  them  and  seriously  believes  them. 
The  stories  of  the  nursery,  in  which  there  are  no  im- 
possibilities, in  which  a  man  may  visit  the  sun  and 
the  winds  in  their  homes  and  find  them  at  their  broth, 
in  which  the  beasts  can  speak,  in  which  the  witch  or 
the  fairy  knows  at  any  distance  what  is  going  on  and 
can  turn  up  just  at  the  nick  of  time,  in  which  ghosts 
walk,  in  which  anything  can  be  changed  into  anything, 
a  hero  going  through  half  a  dozen  transformations  to 
escape  from  so  many  dangers, — these  are  to  the  savage 
not  incredible  nor  foolish  tales,  to  him  they  are  very 
real,  and  very  serious  matters.  He  lives,  in  fact,  we 
are  told  by  the  authorities  on  the  subject,  in  the  myth- 
making  period  of  the  world  ;  in  the  period  when  such 
incidents  as  occur  in  the  tales  of  fairyland  and  in  the 
stories  of  mythology  are  matter  of  common  belief,  and 
even,  it  is  thought,  of  common  experience,  so  that  when 
the  story  is  put  in  a  good  form,  it  lives  and  is  believed 
as  a  true  record  of  what  has  actually  taken  place. 

On  one  feature  of  the  savage  imagination  in  particular 
we  must  fix  our  attention.  The  savage  regards  all 
things  as  animated, — as  animated  with  a  life  like  his 
own.  Of  his  own  life  he  has  no  very  exalted  idea ;  he 
has  no  notion  how  different  he  really  is  from  anything 
around  him  ;  as  he  is  himself,  so  he  supposes  other 
beings  to  be  also,  not  only  the  animals  but  the  trees 
and  all  that  moves  and  even  what  does  not  move,  even 
rocks  and  stones.     He  is  living  himself;  he  regards  all 


CHAP.  II  The  Beginning  of  Religion  25 

these  as  living  too.  He  imagines  them  Hke  himself, 
and  supposes  them  to  have  feelings  and  passions  like 
his  own,  to  reason  as  he  does,  and  even  if  he  is  told 
they  speak  as  he  does,  that  is  not  incredible  to  him. 
Thus  he  lives  in  a  world  of  infinite  confusion,  in  which 
there  are  no  laws,  no  classes  of  beings,  no  means  of 
knowing  what  may  happen,  or  of  verifying  any  state- 
ment, where  every  effort  of  fancy  may  be  believed. 
The  mental  world  of  savages  has  been  compared  to 
the  ravings  of  a  whole  world  turned  lunatic.  We 
survey  it,  however,  without  horror,  because  we  know 
that  reason  is  not  unseated  there,  but  striving  towards 
her  kingdom.  That  is  the  experience  that  had  to  be 
gone  through,  these  are  part  of  the  experiments,  such 
as  every  child  has  still  to  make,  by  which  the  know- 
ledge of  the  world  is  gradually  arrived  at. 

Amid  this  apparent  universal  confusion  a  certain 
consistency  of  view  is  to  be  observed.  It  might  be 
expected  that  the  savage  habit  of  thought,  acting  in- 
dependently in  different  parts  of  the  world,  would  lead 
to  an  infinite  number  of  divergent  and  inconsistent 
views  of  the  nature  of  things  and  of  man's  place  in 
the  world.  But  this  is  not  found  to  be  the  case.  Mr. 
Lansf  accounts  as  follows  for  the  diffusion  of  the  same 
stories  all  over  the  world :  "  An  ancient  identity  of 
mental  status,  and  the  working  of  similar  mental  forces 
at  the  attempt  to  explain  the  same  phenomena,  will 
account  without  any  theory  of  borrowing,  or  of  trans- 
mission of  myth,  or  of  original  unity  of  race,  for  the 
world-wide  diffusion  of  many  mythical  conceptions." 
Mr.  Tylor  says  that  the  same  imaginative  processes 
regularly  recur,  that  world  -  wide  myths  show  the 
regularity  and  the  consistency  of  the  human  imagina- 
tion. M.  Reville,  in  his  Religions  des  peuples  non- 
civilises,  remarks  that  the  character  of  savage  religions 
is  everywhere  the  same  ;  that  only  the  forms  vary. 

Now  of  the  things  that  all  savagfes  possess,  certainly 
peligfion  is  one.     It  is  practically  agreed  that  religion, 


26  History  of  Religion  part  i 

the  belief  in  and  worship  of  gods,  is  universal  at  the 
savage  stage ;  and  the  accounts  which  some  travellers 
have  given  of  tribes  without  religion  are  either  set  down 
to  misunderstanding,  or  are  thought  to  be  insufficient 
to  invalidate  the  assertion  that  religion  is  a  universal 
feature  of  savage  life. 

How  did  it  get  there?  How  comes  it  that  men  so 
near  the  lowest  human  state,  so  devoid  of  all  that  has 
been  since  acquired,  should  yet  be  found  to  have  this 
mode  of  thought  universally  diffused  among  them  ? 

It  has  been  ascribed  to  a  primitive  revelation.  At 
the  beginning,  it  is  said,  God,  with  the  other  gifts  He 
gave  to  man,  gave  him  religion  ;  that  is  to  say,  gave 
him  not  only  a  disposition  for  reverence  and  piety,  but 
a  certain  amount  of  religious  knowledge,  so  that  he 
set  out  with  a  stock  of  religious  ideas  which  were  not 
elaborated  by  his  own  efforts,  but  bestowed  on  him 
ready  made.  It  is  impossible,  however,  to  conceive 
how  this  could  be  done.  If  the  religion  given  at  first 
was  a  lofty  and  pure  one,  —  and  no  other  need  be 
thought  of  in  such  a  connection, — then  it  implies  a 
condition  of  human  life  far  above  the  struggles  and 
uncertainties  of  savage  existence  ;  and  both  the  civilisa- 
tion and  the  religion  must  have  been  lost  afterwards. 
But  how  could  all  mankind  forget  a  pure  religion  ? 
Mankind  in  that  case  cannot  have  been  fit  for  the 
possession  of  it ;  it  was  given  prematurely.  No.  The 
history  of  early  civilisation  is  the  history  of  a  struggle 
in  which  man  has  everything  to  conquer,  and  in  which 
he  is  not  remembering  something  he  had  lost,  but 
advancing  by  new  routes  to  a  land  he  never  reached 
before.  And  if  civilisation  was  won  for  the  first  time, 
so  was  religion. 

We  may  also  put  aside  the  theory  that  man  had 
religion  from  the  first  as  an  innate  idea,  that  he  found 
information  all  ready  and  prepared  in  his  mind  of  what 
il  was  proper  to  do  in  this  direction,  and  how  it  was  to 
be  done.     There  was  indeed  a  suggestion  from  within  ; 


CHAP.  II  The  Beginning  of  Religion  2  J 

but  it  was  due  not  to  any  special  faculty  lying  outside 
the  essential  structure  of  human  nature,  but  to  the 
constitution  of  the  human  mind  itself.  We  cannot 
go  into  the  philosophical  question  of  the  basis  of 
religion  in  the  human  mind.^  It  would  seem  to  be  a 
psyeholog'ical  necessity.  At  all  stages  of  his  existence 
the  world  of  which  man  is  aware  outside  him,  and  the 
world  of  feelings  and  desires  within  him  are  in  conflict. 
But  the  conviction  lives  within  him  that  in  some  way 
they  can  be  brought  into  harmony,  and  that  a  power 
exists  which  rules  in  both  of  these  discordant  ^realms 
and  in  which,  if  he  can  identify  himself  with  it,  he  also 
will  escape  from  their  discord.  If  this  be  so,  then  this 
necessity  to  seek  after  a  higher  power  must  have  begun 
to  operate  as  soon  as  human  consciousness  appeared. 
The  savage  certainly  was  never  unacquainted  with  the 
discrepancy  between  what  he  wanted  and  what  the 
world  would  give  him,  between  the  inner  man  so  full 
of  desires  and  plans,  and  that  outward  nature  which 
denied  him  his  desires  and  thwarted  his  plans,  and 
before  which  he  felt  so  feeble  and  insecure.  He  also 
could  not  but  be  driven,  if  his  life  was  to  go  on  at  all 
on  any  tolerable  basis,  to  believe  in  something  that 
had  to  do  both  with  the  world  outside  him  and  with 
the  world  of  his  heart,  in  a  being  which  both  had 
sympathy  with  his  desires  and  power  to  give  effect  to 
them  outwardly. 

The  whole  of  the  early  world  did  entertain  such  a 
belief.  This  is  the  first  and  the  most  important 
instance  of  uniformity  of  thought  at  a  stage  through 
which  every  nation  once  passed ;  all  men  at  that  stage 
believe  in  gods.  We  will  not  refuse  the  name  of  religion 
to  this  side  of  savage  life,  even  should  the  needs  be  low 
and  material  which  send  the  savage  to  his  god,  though 
his  god  be  a  being  who  in  us  would  excite  the   very 

^  See  on  this  subject  Prof.  Edward  Caird's  Gifford  Lectures,  The 
Evolution  of  Religion,  1893.  Galloway,  The  Principles  of  Religious 
Development, 


28  History  of  Religion  part  i 

opposite  of  reverence,  and  though  his  treatment  of  his 
god  be  far  from  what  to  us  seems  worthy,  or  even 
though  he  strove  to  appease  a  multitude  of  spirits  which 
he  conceived  as  flitting  about  him,  before  he  came  to 
form  a  settled  relation  of  confidence  with  one  being 
whom  he  took  for  his  own  god.  Where  the  sense  of 
need  has  sent  a  human  being  to  hold  intercourse  with 
a  higher  power,  there  we  hold  religion  is  making  its 
appearance.  And  if  this  is  universally  the  case  among 
men  at  the  savage  stage,  then  religion  is  universal 
among  the  ancestors  of  all  nations ;  it  did  not  need 
to  be  invented  when  kings  and  priests  appeared  and 
wanted  it  as  an  instrument  for  their  own  purposes ; 
it  was  there  before  there  were  any  kings  or  priests, 
and  is  an  inheritance  which  has  come  down  to  all 
mankind  from  the  time  when  human  intelligence  first 
turned  to  the  effort  to  understand  the  world. 

Books  Recommended 

For  this  and  the  three  following  chapters 

J.  B.  Tylor,  Anthropology,  Third  Edition,  1891. 

,,         ,,       Primitive  Ctiltnre,  Fourth  Edition,  1903. 
Frazer,    The  Golden  Bough,  Third  Edition,   1900.     A  new  edition  is  now 

appearing  in  parts. 
A.  Lang,  Myth,  Ritual,  and  Religion,  new  edition,  1899. 
Th.  Achelis,  in  Dela  Saussaye. 

Waitz  und  Gerland,  Anthropologie  der  Naturvolker,  18159-72 
Brinton,  Religions  of  Primitive  Peoples,  1897. 
The  reports  of  travellers  and  missionaries  are,  of  couvse,  important. 


CHAPTER   III 

THE   EARLIEST  OBJECTS  OF   WORSHIP 

We  must  now  make  some  attempt  to  set  forth  the 
principal  features  of  the  religion  of  savages.  It  is  an 
attempt  of  some  difficulty  ;  for  savage  religion  is  an 
immense  and  bewildering  jungle  of  all  manner  of  extra- 
ordinary growths.  It  is  described  in  detail  in  large 
books  and  if  we  try  to  sum  it  up  in  a  short  statement, 
we  may  be  told  that  essential  features  have  been 
omitted.  No  one  set  of  savages  has  anything  that 
can  be  called  a  system,  and  different  sets  of  savages 
are  not  alike.  For  the  present  purpose  we  are  obliged 
to  include  under  the  name,  tribes  who  occupy  various 
positions  in  the  scale  of  human  advancement,  and  tribes 
in  all  sorts  of  geographical  positions,  in  hot  climates  and 
in  cold,  both  rude  savages  and  those  who  are  nobler ; 
and  these  will,  of  course,  have  a  variety  of  ideas  and 
needs,  and  in  so  far,  different  religions.  After  reading 
such  a  book  as  Mr.  Frazer's  Golden  Bough,  or  turning 
over  the  pages  of  Waitz  and  Gerland's  Anthropologie 
der  Naturvolker,  one  is  inclined  to  regard  it  as  a  hope- 
less task  to  reduce  savage  religion  to  any  compact 
statement. 

Mr.  Tylor's  orderly  collections,  in  his  great  book 
Primitive  Culture,  of  materials  bearing  on  different 
features  of  early  religion  are  a  help  for  which  the 
student  cannot  be  sufficiently  thankful.  After  all,  it 
is    not    the    whole    of    savage    religion    that    we    are 

29 


30  History  of  Religion  part  i 

responsible  for  here,  but  only  those  parts  of  it  that 
grew  and  survived  in  higher  faiths.  Remembering 
what  has  been  said  as  to  the  uniformity  of  savage 
thought  amid  its  great  variety  of  forms,  and  looking 
for  those  parts  of  it  which  have  proved  to  have  life 
in  them,  rather  than  for  what  is  merely  curious  and 
grotesque,  we  may  venture  on  our  task  not  without 
hope.  In  the  present  chapter  we  shall  inquire  what 
beings  savages  worship  as  gods.  Of  these  we  shall 
find  that  there  are  several  classes ;  and  it  will  be 
necessary  to  notice  the  great  discussions  which  have 
arisen  on  the  question  which  of  these  classes  of  deities 
was  first  worshipped  by  man.  The  objects  worshipped 
by  men  in  low  stages  of  civilisation  may  be  arranged 
in  four  classes,  viz. — 

1.  Parts  of  nature  {a)  great,  {U)  small. 

2.  Spirits  of  ancestors  and  other  spirits. 

3.  Objects  supposed  to  be  haunte^,  by  spirits 

(fetish-worship). 

4.  A  Supreme  Being. 

I.  Nature-worship. — It  is  not  difficult  to  realise  why 
early  man  turned  to  the  great  elements  of  nature  as 
beings  who  could  help  him,  and  whom  he  ought,  there- 
fore, to  cultivate.  The  farther  we  go  back  in  civilisation, 
the  less  protection  has  man  against  the  weather,  the 
more  do  his  subsistence  and  his  comfort  depend  on 
the  action  of  the  sun,  the  winds,  the  rain.  If,  according 
to  the  habits  of  early  thought,  he  conceived  these  beings 
as  living  like  himself  and  as  guided  by  feelings  and 
motives  similar  to  his  own,  he  could  not  fail  to  wish 
to  open  up  communication  with  them.  That  simple 
view,  that  they  were  living  beings  with  feelings  like 
his  own,  was  enough  to  go  upon.  In  his  anxieties  for 
food  or  warmth  he  could  not  fail  to  think  of  the  beings 
who,  he  had  observed,  had  power  to  supply  him  with 
these  comforts,  of  the  rain  which  he  had  noticed  was 
able  to  make  food  grow,  of  the  sun  whose  warmth  he 


CHAP.  Ill    The  Earliest  Objects  of  Worship  31 

knew.  The  thunderstorm  was  a  being  who  had  power 
to  put  an  end  to  a  long  drought ;  the  winds  could  break 
the  trees,  could  dry  up  the  wet  earth,  or  could  bring 
rain.  Heaven  was  over  all,  and  the  Earth  was  the 
supporter  and  fertile  producer  of  all ;  from  her  all  life 
came.  The  moon  as  well  as  the  sun  was  a  friendly 
power,  nay,  in  some  climates,  more  friendly.  Fire  was 
a  living  being  certainly,  on  whom  much  depended  ;  and 
so  was  the  great  lake  or  the  ocean.  This  is  what 
M.  Reville  calls  the  great  Nature-worship,  in  comparison 
with  the  minor  Nature-worship  to  be  noticed  presently. 
We  do  not  now  enter  on  the  subject  of  mythology  ; 
that  is  to  say,  of  the  names  men  very  early  began 
to  give  to  the  great  natural  objects  of  worship,  the 
characters  they  ascribed  to  them,  the  stories  they  told 
about  them.  That  process  of  myth-making  began  very 
early,  and  is  to  be  found  at  work  in  every  part  of  the 
world.  But  at  first  it  was  simply  the  natural  being 
itself,  conceived  as  living,  that  was  worshipped,  not  a 
spirit  or  a  person  thought  to  dwell  in  it.  Of  this, 
abundant  evidence  has  survived  in  the  great  religions. 
Jupiter  is  just  the  sky,  the  Greek  god  Helios  is  just 
the  sun,  and  the  goddess  Selene  the  moon.  In  China 
heaven  itself  is  worshipped  to  this  day.  The  Baby- 
lonians worshipped  the  stars.  The  Vedic  gods  are 
primarily  the  elements.  From  savage  life  examples 
of  this  earliest  state  of  matters  can  also  be  quoted, 
though  mythology  has  nearly  everywhere  greatly  con- 
fused it.  The  Mincopies  adore  the  sun  as  a  beneficent 
deity,  the  moon  as  an  inferior  god.  To  the  Natchez 
the  sun  is  the  supreme  god  ;  with  some  tribes  of  North 
America  the  chief  god  is  heaven  blowing,  the  sky 
with  a  wind  in  it,  what  Longfellow  calls  the  "  Great 
Spirit"  or  blowing.  The  Incas  invoked  together  the 
Creator  and  the  Sun  and  Thunder.  Thunder  was  one 
of  the  great  gods  of  the  Germans.  The  Samoyede 
bows  to  the  Sun  every  morning  and  every  evening 
and  says,  "  When  thou  arisest  I  also  arise ;  when  thou 


32  History  of  Religion  part  i 

settest  I  also  betake  myself  to  rest."  To  the  Ojibways 
Fire  is  a  divine  being,  to  be  well  entertained,  with  whom 
no  liberties  must  be  taken.  In  every  land  men  are  to 
be  found  who  worship  the  Earth  as  a  great  deity,  call- 
ing her  by  her  own  name  and  serving  her  with  suitable 
rites.  In  the  Prometheus  of  vEschylus  the  hero  addresses 
his  appeal  as  follows  to  the  beings  he  regards  as  gods 
of  old  race  who  will  sympathise  with  him  against  the 
upstart  Zeus : — 

Ether  of  Heaven  and  Winds  untired  of  wing, 
Rivers  whose  fountains  fail  not,  and  thou  Sea, 
Laughing  in  waves  innumerable  !  O  Earth, 
All-mother  ! — Yea  and  on  the  Sun  I  call. 
Whose  orb  scans  all  things  ;  look  on  me  and  see 
How  I,  a  god,  am  wronged  by  gods. 

Lewis  Campbell^  line  85  sq. 

The  minor  Nature- worship  has  to  do  with  rivers  and 
springs,  with  trees  and  groves,  with  crops  and  fruits, 
with  rocks  and  stones,  and  with  the  lower  animals. 
Here  also  we  must  bear  in  mind  the  habit  of  mind 
of  early  man,  who  regarded  all  things  as  animated 
and  as  like  himself  It  was  not  necessary  for  one 
who  thought  in  this  way  to  suppose  that  the  spring 
was  haunted  by  a  nymph  or  the  oak  inhabited  by  a 
dryad,  before  he  felt  that  the  spring  or  the  oak  had  a 
claim  on  him,  and  brought  offerings  to  secure  their 
friendship.  The  Nile  and  the  Ganges  did  not  become 
sacred  by  having  a  mythical  being  added  to  them 
as  their  spirit;  they  were  themselves  sacred  beings. 
Every  country  is  studded  with  names  which  reveal 
to  the  scholar  the  primeval  sanctity  of  the  spots 
they  belong  to ;  the  mountain,  the  grove,  and  the 
individual  tree,  the  rocky  gorge,  the  rock,  the  grassy 
knoll,  each  was  once  an  object  of  reverence.  Britain  is 
full  of  sacred  wells,  which  once  received  prayers  and 
offerings.  There  is  no  animal  that  has  not  once  been 
worshipped.  A  marked  feature  of  primitive  life  also  is 
the  worship  of  nature  not  in  its  particular  objects  but  in 


CHAP.  Ill    The  Earliest  Objects  of  Worship  2>Z 

its  living  processes.  In  a  multitude  of  curious  rites, 
some  of  which  still  survive  in  local  usages,  and  have  only 
recently  been  explained,  primitive  man  brought  him- 
self into  relations  with  nature  in  its  growth,  decay,  and 
resurrection.  He  sympathised  with  it  and  imitated  it, 
and  he  thus  sought  to  make  himself  sure  of  the  benefits 
which  he  saw  bestowed  by  some  power  which  he 
apprehended  in  its  processes  and  believed  able  to 
further  him. 

2.  Ancestor  -  worship.— A  set  of  beings  of  a  very 
different  kind  comes  next.  If  man  found  in  the  world 
which  he  beheld  outside  him  a  number  of  objects  he 
could  make  gods,  his  domestic  experience  forced  him 
to  consider  certain  beings  of  a  different  kind,  of  whom 
the  outward  world  could  tell  him  nothing.  The  worship 
of  the  dead,  of  ancestors,  is  diffused  throughout  nearly 
the  whole  of  antiquity,  it  is  practised  by  most  savages. 
Man  at  an  early  stage  does  not  fully  realise  the  meaning 
of  death.  He  interprets  death  after  the  analogy  ofs,/' 
dreams,  in  which  he  judges  that  the  spirit  leaves  the 
body  and  traverses  distant  regions,  coming  back  to 
the  body  again  when  the  journey  is  ended.  A  vision 
is  to  him  an  instance  of  the  same  thing.  He  sees  a 
friend,  who,  he  afterwards  learns,  was  far  from  him 
at  the  time,  and  he  judges  that  it  was  the  spirit  of  his 
friend  which  visited  him.  Thus  there  arises  in  his 
mind  the  conception  of  a  human  spirit  which  is  able 
to  leave  the  body  and  dwell  at  a  distance  from  it.  It 
is  called  by  various  names, — the  shade,  the  image,  the 
heart,  as  perhaps  when  Elisha  says  his  heart  went  with 
Gehazi  when  he  went  to  meet  Naaman  the  Syrian  (2 
Kings  V.  26),  the  breath,  the  soul.  When  the  breath 
or  spirit  goes  away  and  stays  away  (in  spite  of  efforts 
made  to  bring  it  back)  the  man  dies.  But  the  spirit 
is  not  dead.  It  has  gone  away  and  is  staying  somewhere 
else.  The  spirit  resembles  the  body  in  shape,  but  it  is 
of  a  thin  and  light  consistence,  and  is  able  to  move 
about  and  to  pass  through   the  smallest  openings,  to 

C 


34  History  of  Religion  part  i 

make  unpleasant  noises,  and  to  cause  its  presence  to  be 
felt  in  a  variety  of  ways.  In  the  very  earliest  times, 
the  savage  regards  the  spirit  which  has  left  the  house 
as  an  enemy,  and  uses  a  variety  of  precautions  to  keep 
it  from  coming  back  to  trouble  him  (vampires,  ghosts, 
lernures).  Whether  from  such  fear  or  from  more  liberal 
motives,  much  is  done  to  please  the  spirits  of  the 
departed  and  to  increase  their  comfort  in  the  abodes  to 
which  they  have  gone.  At  their  burial  or  cremation  all 
they  may  be  supposed  to  want  where  they  are  going, 
i.e.  the  things  they  used  on  earth,  are  made  to  accom- 
pany them  ;  food  and  weapons  are  placed  beside  them  ; 
servants  are  killed  whose  spirits  are  to  wait  on  them,  even 
a  wife,  voluntarily  or  without  being  asked,  gives  up  her 
earthly  life  to  accompany  her  husband.  Offerings  of 
food  and  drink  are  made  to  them  afterwards,  prayers 
are  addressed  to  them,  memorials  of  them,  of  various 
kinds,  are  preserved  in  the  houses  they  occupied. 

It  was  the  universal  belief  of  the  early  world  that 
the  person  continued  to  exist  after  the  death  of  the 
1/  body  ;  and  this  furnished  the  materials  for  a  religion 
which  was  more  widely  prevalent  in  antiquity  than 
the  worship  of  any  god.  In  some  forms  of  it,  indeed, 
the  spirit  appears  to  have  been  treated  as  an  enemy, 
and  this  worship  might  be  judged  to  fall  short  of 
religion,  which  is  the  cultivation,  not  the  avoidance,  of 
intercourse  with  higher  powers.  The  savage  has  no 
hope  from  the  spirit,  and  does  not  seek  his  intercourse. 
But  in  most  forms  of  the  belief  in  the  continued  life 
of  the  departed,  other  sentiments  than  fear  prevail ; 
natural  affection  is  felt  for  the  lost  relative  ;  the  ancestor 
represents  the  family,  to  which  the  individual  is  called 
to  subordinate  and  to  some  extent  even  to  sacrifice 
himself;  the  spirit  of  the  dead  is  the  upholder  of  a 
family  tradition  which  the  living  must  hold  sacred. 
Even  in  those  cases  in  which  nothing  but  fear  is 
apparent,  these  latter  sentiments  may  also  be  to  somq 
extent  operative. 


CHAP.  Ill    The  Earliest  Objects  of  Worship  35 

3.  Fetish  -  worship.  —  The  early  world  has  still 
another  kind  of  deity.  In  the  case  of  all  those  we 
have  considered,  the  god  stands  in  some  respect  above 
the  worshipper ;  man  reverences  the  sun,  spirit,  or 
animal,  for  some  quality  in  them  that  is  admirable 
or  that  gives  them  a  hold  over  him  ;  they  are  in  some 
ways  beyond  him.  Among  certain  sets  of  savages, 
however,  notably  in  South  Africa,  this  feature  of 
religion  partially  disappears,  and  objects  are  reverenced 
not  for  any  intrinsic  quality  in  them  that  makes  them 
worthy  of  regard,  but  because  of  a  spirit  which  is 
supposed  to  be  connected  with  them.  Stones,  trees, 
twigs,  pieces  of  bark,  roots,  corn,  claws  of  birds,  teeth, 
skin,  feathers,  articles  of  human  manufacture,  any  con- 
ceivable object,  will  be  held  in  reverence  by  the  savage 
and  regarded  as  embodying  a  spirit.  Anything  that 
strikes  his  fancy  as  being  out  of  the  common  he  will 
take  up  and  add  to  his  museum  of  objects,  each  of 
which  has  in  it  a  hidden  power.  That  power,  be  it 
repeated,  is  not  connected  with  the  natural  quality  of 
the  object,  but  is  due  to  a  spirit  which  has  come  to 
reside  in  it,  and  which  may  very  possibly  leave  it  again. 
Having  chosen  this  deity  and  set  it  up  for  worship, 
the  man  can  use  it  as  he  thinks  fit.  He  addresses 
prayers  to  it  and  extols  its  virtues  ;  but  should  his 
enterprise  not  prosper,  he  will  cast  his  deity  aside  as 
useless,  and  cease  to  worship  it ;  he  will  address  it 
with  torrents  of  abuse,  and  will  even  beat  it,  to  make 
it  serve  him  better.  It  is  a  deity  at  his  disposal,  to 
serve  in  the  accomplishment  of  his  desires  ;  the  indi- 
vidual keeps  gods  of  his  own  to  help  him  in  his  under- 
takings. 

The  name  "  fetishism,"  by  which  this  kind  of  worship 

is  known,  is  of  Portuguese  origin  ;    it  is  derived  from 

feitigo,  "made,"  "artificial"  (compare  the  old  English 

fetys,  used   by   Chaucer) ;   and  this   term,  used  of  the 

charms   and   amulets    worn    in    the    Roman   Catholic 

religion  of  the  period,  was  applied  by  the  Portuguese 


36  History  of  Religion  part  i 

sailors  of  the  eighteenth  century  to  the  deities  they 
saw  worshipped  by  the  negroes  of  the  West  Coast  of 
Africa.  De  Brosses,  a  French  savant  of  last  century, 
brought  the  word  fetishism  into  use  as  a  term  for  the 
type  of  religion  of  the  lowest  races.  The  word  has 
given  rise  to  some  confusion,  having  been  applied  by 
Comte  and  other  writers  to  the  worship  of  the  heavenly 
bodies  and  of  the  great  features  of  nature.  It  is  best 
to  limit  it,  as  has  been  done  above,  to  the  worship  of 
such  natural  objects  as  are  reverenced  not  for  their 
own  power  or  excellence  but  because  they  are  supposed 
to  be  occupied  each  by  a  spirit. 

Can  this  be  called  religion?  In  the  full  sense  of 
the  term  it  cannot.  We  should  remember  that  it  is 
not  the  casual  object,  but  the  spirit  connected  with 
it  that  the  savage  worships ;  but  even  then  we  shall 
be  obliged  to  hold  that  the  fetish  worshipper  is  rather 
seeking  after  religion  than  actually  in  possession  of  it. 

4.  A  Supreme  Being. — Is  it  necessary  to  add  another 
class  of  deity  to  these  three,  and  to  say  that  besides 
nature-gods  and  spirits  early  man  also  worshipped  a 
Supreme  Being  above  all  these  ?  In  most  savage 
religions  there  is  a  principal  deity  to  whom  the  others 
are  subordinate.  But  if  we  carefully  examine  one  by 
one  the  supreme  gods  of  these  religions,  we  shall  find 
reason  to  doubt  whether  they  really  have  a  common 
character  so  as  to  form  a  class  by  themselves.  Many 
of  them  are  nature  gods  who  have  outgrown  the  other 
deities  of  that  class  and  come  to  occupy  an  isolated 
position.  The  North  American  Indians,  as  we  saw, 
worship  the  Great  Spirit,  the  heaven  with  its  breath, 
to  whom  sun  and  moon  and  other  ordinances  of  nature 
act  as  ministers.  In  many  cases  heaven  is  the  highest 
god.  In  others  again  the  sun  is  supreme.  Ukko  the 
great  god  of  the  Finns  is  a  heaven-  and  rain-god. 
Perkunas  the  god  of  the  Lithuanians  is  connected  with 
thunder.  On  the  other  hand  there  are  instances  in 
which  the  supreme  god  appears  to  be  a  different  being 


CHAP.  Ill    The  Eaidiest  Objects  of  Worship  2>1 

from  the  nature-god.  The  Samoyedes  worship  the  sun 
and  moon  and  the  spirits  of  other  parts  of  nature ;  but 
they  also  believe  in  a  good  spirit  who  is  above  all. 
The  Supreme  Being  of  the  islands  of  the  Pacific  bears 
in  New  Zealand  the  name  of  Tangaroa,  and  is  spoken 
of  in  quite  metaphysical  terms  as  the  uncreated  and 
eternal  Creator.  Here  we  may  suspect  Christian 
influence.  With  the  Zulus  Unkulunkulu  the  Old-old 
one  might  be  supposed  to  be  a  kind  of  first  cause. 
But  on  looking  nearer  we  find  he  is  distinctly  a  man, 
the  first  man,  the  common  ancestor ;  beyond  which 
idea  speculation  does  not  seem  to  go.  Among  many 
North  American  tribes  it  is  usual  to  find  an  animal 
the  chief  deity,  the  hare  or  the  musk-rat  or  the  coyote. 
It  is  very  common  to  find  in  savage  beliefs  a  vague 
far-off  god  who  is  at  the  back  of  all  the  others,  takes 
little  part  in  the  management  of  things,  and  receives 
little  worship.  But  it  is  impossible  to  judge  what 
that  being  was  at  an  earlier  time ;  he  may  have  been 
a  nature-god  or  a  spirit  who  has  by  degrees  grown 
faint  and  come  to  occupy  this  position.  We  cannot 
judge  from  the  supreme  beings  of  savages,  such  as 
they  are,  that  the  belief  in  a  supreme  being  was 
generally  diffused  in  the  world  ^  in  the  earliest  times, 
and  is  not  to  be  derived  from  any  of  the  processes 
from  which  the  other  gods  arose.  We  shall  see  after- 
wards how  natural  the  tendency  is  which,  where  there 
are  several  gods,  brings  one  of  them  to  the  front  while 
the  others  lose  importance.  For  a  theory  of  primitive 
monotheism  the  supreme  gods  of  savages  certainly  do 
not  furnish  sufficient  evidence ;  they  do  not  appear 
to  have  sprung  all  from  the  same  source,  but  to  have 
advanced  from  very  different  quarters  to  the  supreme 
position,  in  obedience  to  that  native  instinct  of  man's 
mind  which  causes  him,  even  when  he  believes  in  many 
gods,  to  make  one  of  them  supreme. 

^  Cf.  A.  Lang,  The  Making  of  Religion  (1898) ;  Galloway,  Studies  in 
the  Philosophy  0/  Religion  (1904),  p.    123,  sqq. 


3 8         .  History  of  Religion  part  i 

Which  Gods  were  First  Worshipped?— If  then  early 
man  formed  his  gods  from  parts  of  nature  and  from 
spirits  of  departed  ancestors  or  heroes,  and  even,  should 
the  more  backward  races  now  existing  represent  a  stage 
of  human  life  belonging  to  the  early  world,  from  spirits 
residing  in  outward  objects,  which  of  these  is  the  original 
root  of  all  the  religions  of  the  world  ?  The  claim  has 
been  made  for  each  of  these  kinds  of  religion,  that  it 
came  first. 

I.  Fetish-g-ods  came  First. — Till  recently  the  view 
prevailed  that  all  the  religion  of  the  world  has  sprung 
out  of  fetishism.  First  the  savage  took  for  his  god 
some  casual  object,  as  we  have  described,  then  he  chose 
higher  objects,  trees  and  mountains,  rivers  and  lakes, 
and  even  the  sun  and  stars.  The  heavens  at  last 
became  his  supreme  fetish,  and  at  a  higher  level,  when 
he  had  learned  about  spirits,  he  would  make  a  spirit 
his  fetish,  and  so  at  last  come  to  Monotheism. 

This  view  is  attractive  because  it  places  the  beginning 
of  religion  in  the  lowest  known  form  of  it  and  thus 
makes  for  the  belief  that  the  course  of  the  world's  faith 
has  been  upward  from  the  first.  But  it  presents  the 
gravest  difficulties  ;  for  why  should  the  savage  make 
a  god  of  a  stick  or  a  stone,  and  attribute  to  it  super- 
natural powers  ?  Who  told  him  about  a  god,  that  he 
should  call  a  stick  god,  or  about  supernatural  powers, 
that  he  should  suppose  a  stick  to  work  wonders  ?  There 
is  nothing  in  the  stick  to  suggest  such  notions ;  that  he 
should  make  gods  in  this  way,  that  the  belief  in  wonder- 
ful powers  should  originate  in  this  way,  is  surely  quite 
incredible.  Much  more  likely  i«  it,  surely,  that  he  got 
the  notion  of  God  from  some  other  quarter  and  applied 
it  in  his  own  grotesque  and  degraded  way  ;  than  that 
the  notion  of  God  was  taken  first  from  such  poor  forms 
and  applied  afterwards  to  objects  better  suited  to  it. 
Religion  and  civilisation  go  hand  in  hand,  and  if  civilisa- 
tion can  decay  (and  leading  anthropologists  declare  that 
the  debased  tribes  of  Australia  and  West  Africa  show 


CHAP.  Ill     The  Earliest  Objects  of  Worship  39 

signs  of  a  higher  civilisation  they  have  lost)  then  religion 
also  may  decay.  A  lower  race  may  borrow  religious 
ideas  from  a  higher  and  adapt  them  to  their  own 
position,  i.e.  degrade  them.  And  the  progress  of 
religion  may  still  have  been  upwards  on  the  whole, 
although  retrograde  movements  have  taken  place  in 
certain  races.  On  these  and  other  grounds  it  is  now 
held  with  growing  certainty  that  fetishism  cannot  be 
the  original  form  of  religion,  and  that  the  higher  stages 
of  it  are  not  to  be  derived  from  that  one.  The  races 
among  whom  fetishism  is  found  exhibit  a  well-known 
feature  of  the  decadence  of  religion,  namely  that  the 
great  god  or  gods  have  grown  weak  and  faint,  and 
smaller  gods  and  spirits  have  crowded  in  to  fill  up  the 
blank  thus  caused.  Worship  is  transferred  from  the 
great  beings  who  are  the  original  gods  of  the  tribe  and 
whom  it  still  professes  in  a  vague  way  to  believe,  to 
numerous  smaller  beings,  and  from  the  good  gods  to 
the  bad. 

2.  Spirits,  Human  or  Quasi-human,  came  First. — Is 
the  worship  of  spirits  then  the  original  form  of  religions. 
This  has  been  powerfully  maintained  in  this  country 
by  Mr.  Herbert  Spencer  and  Mr.  Tylor.  According  to 
Mr.  Spencer  "the  rudimentary  form  of  al!  religion  is 
the  propitiation  of  dead  ancestors."  Men  concluded,  as 
soon  as  they  were  capable  of  such  reasoning,  that  the 
life  they  witnessed  in  plants  and  animals,  in  sun  and 
moon  and  other  parts  of  nature,  was  due  to  their  being 
inhabited  by  the  spirits  of  departed  men.  With  all 
respect  for  the  splendid  exposition  given  by  Mr.  Spencer^ 
of  the  early  beliefs  of  mankind  regarding  spirits,  it  is 
impossible  to  think  that  he  has  made  out  his  case  when 
he  treats  the  gods  of  early  India  and  of  Greece  as 
deified  ancestors.  If  the  natural  incredulity  we  feel 
at  being  told  that  Jupiter,  Jndra,  the  sun,  the  sacred 
mountain,  and  the  stars  all  alike  came  to  be  worshipped 

^  Sociology,  vol.  i.  Also  Ecclesiastical  Institutions,  p.  675  ;  "ghost- 
propitiation  is  the  origin  of  all  religions." 


40  History  of  Religion  part  i 

because  each  of  them  represented  some  departed  human 
hero,  is  not  at  once  decisive,  we  have  only  to  wait  a 
Httle  to  see  whether  some  other  theory  cannot  account 
for  these  gods  in  a  simpler  way. 

Mp  TyloP  also  derives  all  religion  from  the  worship  of 
spirits,  but  in  a  different  way.  His  is  the  most  com- 
prehensive system  of  Animism,  using  that  term  in  the 
narrower  sense  of  soul  -  worship.  Starting  from  the 
doctrine  of  souls,  reached  by  early  man  in  the  way 
described  above  (p.  33,  sqq^^  he  argues  that  when  once 
this  notion  was  reached  it  would  be  applied  to  other 
beings  as  well  as  man.  Not  having  learned  to  dis- 
tinguish himself  clearly  from  other  beings,  man  would 
judge  that  they  had  souls  like  his  own  ;  and  so  every 
part  of  nature  came  to  have  its  soul,  and  everything 
that  went  on  in  the  universe  was  to  be  explained  as 
the  activity  of  souls.  It  was  in  this  way,  according  to 
Mr.  Tylor,  that  the  view  of  the  universal  animation  of 
nature,  characteristic  of  early  thought,  was  reached. 
"  As  the  human  body  was  held  to  live  and  act  by  virtue 
of  its  own  inhabiting  spirit-soul,  so  the  operations  of 
the  world  seemed  to  be  carried  on  by  other  spirits." 
At  this  point  the  soul  is  an  unsubstantial  essence 
inhabiting  a  body,  it  has  its  life  and  activity  only  in 
connection  with  the  body ;  but  the  step  was  easily 
taken  to  the  further  belief  in  spirits  like  the  souls,  but 
not  attached  to  any  body.  The  spirits  moved  about 
freely,  like  the  genii,  demons,  fairies,  and  beings  of  all 
kinds,  with  whom  to  the  mind  of  antiquity  the  world 
was  so  crowded. 

Three  classes  of  spirits  we  have  up  to  this  point : 
those  of  ancestors,  those  attached  to  the  various  parts 
of  the  life  of  nature,  and  those  existing  independently. 
Can  the  higher  nature-deities  be  accounted  for  by  this 
theory  as  well  as  the  minor  spirits  of  the  parts  of  nature  ? 
Mr.  Tylor  considers  that  they  can  ;  he  declares  that  the 
"higher  deities  of  polytheism  have  their  place  in  the 
general  animistic   system  of  mankind."      He  acknow- 


CHAP.  Ill    The  Earliest  Objects  of  Worship  41 

ledges  that,  with  few  exceptions,  great  gods  have  a 
place  as  well  as  smaller  gods  in  every  non-civilised 
system  of  religion.  But  in  origin  and  essence  he  holds 
they  are  the  same.  "  The  difference  is  rather  of  rank 
than  of  nature."  As  chiefs  and  kings  are  among  men 
so  are  the  great  gods  among  the  lesser  spirits.  The 
sun,  the  heavens,  the  stars,  are  living  beings,  because 
they  have  spirits  as  man  has  a  soul,  or  as  a  spring  has 
a  spirit  that  haunts  it.  Thus  in  the  doctrine  of  souls 
is  found  the  origin  of  the  whole  of  early  religion.  Mr. 
Tylor  confesses,  however,  that  it  is  impossible  to  trace 
the  process  by  which  the  doctrine  of  souls  gave  rise 
to  the  belief  in  the  great  gods. 

The  weakness  of  this  view  is  that  it  involves  a  denial 
that  the  great  powers  of  nature  could  be  worshipped 
before  the  process  of  reasoning  had  been  completed 
which  led  to  the  belief  that  they  had  souls  or  spirits. 
But  how  did  early  man  regard  these  great  powers 
before  this  ?  Did  they  not  appear  to  him  adorable  by 
the  very  impressions  they  made  upon  his  various  senses  ? 
Did  he  really  need  to  argue  out  the  belief  that  they  had 
souls,  before  he  felt  drawn  to  wonder  at  them,  and  to 
seek  to  enter  into  relations  with  them  ? 

Animism. — The  word  Animism,  it  should  here  be 
noticed,  is  used  in  the  study  of  religions  in  a  wider 
sense  than  that  of  Mr.  Tylor.  Many  of  the  great 
religions  are  known  to  have  arisen  out  of  a  primitive 
worship  of  spirits  and  to  have  advanced  from  that  stage 
to  a  worship  of  gods.  The  god  differs  from  the  spirit 
in  having  a  marked  personal  character,  while  the  spirits 
form  a  vague  and  somewhat  undistinguishable  crowd  ; 
in  having  a  regular  clientele  of  worshippers,  whereas  the 
spirit  is  only  served  by  those  who  need  to  communicate 
with  him ;  in  having  therefore  a  regular  worship,  while 
the  spirit  is  only  worshipped  when  the  occasion  arises  ; 
and  in  being  served  from  feelings  of  attachment  and 
trust,  and  not  like  the  spirits  from  fear.  When  gods 
appear,  some  writers  hold,  then  and  not  till  then  does 


4^  History  of  Religion  i'art  i 

religion  begin  ;  before  that  point  is  reached  magic  and 
exorcism  are  the  forms  used  for  addressing  the  unseen 
beings,  but  when  it  is  reached  we  have  worship ;  inter- 
course is  deHberately  sought  with  beings  who  hold 
regular  relations  with  man.  The  word  Animism  is 
best  employed  to  denote  the  worship  of  spirits  as  dis- 
tinguished from  that  of  gods.  Whether  or  not  early 
man  derived  his  belief  in  the  multitude  of  spirits  by 
which  he  believed  himself  to  be  surrounded,  from  his 
belief  in  the  separable  human  soul,  there  is  no  doubt 
that  he  did  consider  himself  to  be  so  surrounded. 
Animism  in  this  sense  is  undoubtedly  the  beginning 
of  some  at  least  of  the  great  religions. 

3.  The  Minor  Nature  -  worship  came  First. —  M. 
Reville  holds  ^  that  the  tree  and  the  river  and  other 
such  beings  were  the  first  gods,  and  that  the  deifica- 
tion of  the  great  powers  of  nature  came  afterwards  as 
an  extension  of  the  same  principle.  Mr.  Max  Miiller 
seems  to  share  this  view  when  he  says  that  man  was 
led  from  the  worship  of  semi-tangible  objects,  which 
provided  him  with  semi-deities,  to  that  of  intangible 
objects,  which  gave  him  deities  proper.  The  Germans, 
as  a  rule,  hold  the  view  that  the  great  nature-worship 
came  first,  and  that  the  sanctity  of  the  tree  and  the 
river  came  to  them  from  above,  these  objects  being 
regarded  as  lesser  living  beings  deserving  to  be 
worshipped  as  well  as  the  greater  ones.  The  English 
school  let  the  sanctity  of  these  objects  come  to  them 
as  it  were  from  below ;  when  man  has  come  to  believe 
in  spirits,  he  concludes  that  they  have  spirits  too,  and 
worships  the  spirits  he  supposes  to  dwell  in  them.  It 
does  not  seem  that  these  theories  are  entirely  exclusive 
of  each  other.  French  writers  suppose  that  the  minor 
nature-worship  first  sprang  up  of  itself,  half-animal  man 
respecting  the  animals  as  rivals,  the  trees  as  fruit-bearers 
for  his  hunger,  and  so  on,  and  that  spirits  were  added 

*  Reville,  Hutoirt  des  religions  des  petiples  non-civilisis,  ii.  225. 


CHAP.  Ill    The  Earliest  Objects  of  Worship  43 

to  these  beings  when  the  great  animistic  movement  of 
thought  in  which  these  writers  beheve  took  place,  of 
course  at  a  very  early  period.^ 

4.  The  Great  Nature-powers  came  First. — We  come 
in  the  last  place  to  that  class  of  deities  which  we  spoke 
of  first — the  powers  of  nature.  By  several  great  writers 
it  is  held  that  the  worship  of  these  is  the  original  form 
of  all  religion.  We  shall  give  two  of  the  leading  theories 
on  the  subject,  that  of  Mr.  Max  Miiller  and  that  gf  Ed. 
von  Hartmann. 

Mr.  Max  Miiller  has  written  very  strongly  against  the 
view  that  fetishism  is  a  primary  form  of  religion,  and 
holds  that  the  worship  of  casual  objects  is  not  a  stage 
of  religion  once  universally  prevalent,  but  is,  on  the 
contrary,  a  parasitical  development  and  of  accidental 
origin.  He  does  not  tell  us  what  the  original  religion 
of  mankind  was.  The  work  in  which  he  deals  most 
directly  with  this  question^  is  concerned  chiefly  with 
the  Indian  faith,  the  early  stages  of  which  he  regards 
as  the  most  typical  instance  of  the  growth  of  religion 
generally.  He  does  not,  however,  tell  us  definitely 
out  of  what  earlier  kind  of  religion  that  of  the  Aryans 
grew,  which  India  best  teaches  us  to  know,  or  what 
religion  they  had  before  they  developed  that  of  the 
Vedic  hymns.  We  may  infer,  however,  what  his  view 
on  this  point  is  from  the  very  interesting  sketch  he 
draws  of  the  psychological  advance  man  could  make, 
in  selecting  objects  of  reverence,  from  one  class  of 
things  to  another  (p.  i'jg,sgg.).  First,  there  are  tangible 
objects,  which,  however,  Mr.  Max  Muller  denies  that 
mankind  as  a  whole  ever  did  worship  ;  such  things  as 
stones,  shells,  and  bones.  Then  second,  semi-tangible 
objects ;  such  as  trees,  mountains,  rivers,  the  sea,  the 
earth,  which  supply  the  material  for  what  may  be  called 
semi-deities.     And  third,  intangible  objects,  such  as  the 

'  This  view  is  the  basis  of  M.    Andre  Lefevre's  La  Religion.     Piiiis, 
1892. 
^  Lectures  on  the  Origin  of  Religion,  1882. 


44  History  of  Religion  part  i 

sky,  the  stars,  the  sun,  the  dawn,  the  moon;  in  these 
are  to  be  seen  the  germs  of  deities.  At  each  of  these 
stages  man  is  seeking  not  for  something  finite  but  for 
the  infinite ;  from  the  first  he  has  a  presentiment  of 
something  far  beyond  ;  he  grasps  successive  objects  of 
worship  not  for  themselves  but  for  what  they  seem 
to  tell  of,  though  it  is  not  there,  and  this  sense  of  the 
infinite,  even  in  poor  and  inadequate  beliefs,  is  the  germ 
of  religion  in  him.  When  he  rises  after  his  long  journey 
to  fix  his  regards  on  the  great  powers  of  nature,  he 
apprehends  in  them  something  great  and  transcendent. 
He  applies  to  them  great  titles ;  he  calls  them  devas, 
shining  ones  ;  asnras,  living  ones ;  and,  at  length, 
ainartas,  immortal  ones.  At  first  these  were  no  more 
than  descriptive  titles,  applied  to  the  great  visible 
phenomena  of  nature  as  a  class.  They  expressed  the 
admiration  and  wonder  the  young  mind  of  man  felt 
itself  compelled  to  pay  to  these  magnificent  beings. 
But  by  giving  them  these  names  he  was  led  instinctively 
to  regard  them  as  persons  ;  he  ascribed  to  them  human 
attributes  and  dramatic  actions,  so  that  they  became 
definite,  transcendent,  living  personalities.  In  these, 
more  than  in  any  former  objects  of  his  adoration,  his 
craving  for  the  infinite  was  satisfied.  Thus  the  ancient 
Aryan  advanced,  "  from  the  visible  to  the  invisible,  from 
the  bright  beings  that  could  be  touched,  like  the  river 
that  could  be  seen,  like  the  thunder  that  could  be  heard, 
like  the  sun,  to  the  devas  that  could  no  longer  be 
touched  or  heard  or  seen.  .  .  .  The  way  was  traced 
out  by  nature  herself" 

This  famous  theory  is,  when  we  come  to  examine 
it,  rather  puzzling.  It  does  not  account  for  the  first 
beginnings  of  religion  except  by  inference,  and  it  does 
so  in  two  contradictory  ways  ;  for,  on  the  one  hand, 
Mr.  Max  Mijller  enumerates  tangible  objects  first  as 
those  from  which  men  rose  to  higher  objects,  and  on 
the  other  he  denies  that  fetishism  is  a  primitive  forma- 
tion.    He  suggests  that  there  were  earlier  gods  than  the 


CHAP.  Ill    The  Earliest  Objects  of  Worship  45 

devas,  but  he  tells  us  nothing  about  them,  except  that 
they  were  not  fully  deities  ;  they  were  only  semi-deities, 
or  not  deities  at  all.  The  worship  of  spirits  he  leaves 
entirely  out  of  consideration  ;  religion  did  not,  in  his 
view,  begin  with  Animism.  When  he  does  tell  us  of 
the  beginnings  of  religion,  what  is  his  view  ?  The 
religion  of  the  Aryans  began,  and  it  is  a  type — the 
other  religions  presumably  began  in  the  same  way, 
e.g.  those  of  China  and  of  Egypt — by  the  impression 
made  on  man  from  without  by  great  natural  objects 
co-operating  with  his  inner  presentiment  of  the  infinite, 
which  they  met  to  a  greater  degree  than  any  objects 
he  had  tried  before.  Religion  was  due  accordingly 
to  aesthetic  impressions  from  without,  answering  an 
aesthetic  and  intellectual  inner  need.  Those  needs, 
then,  which  led  men  to  make  gods  of  the  great  powers 
of  earth  and  heaven  were  not  of  an  animal  or  material 
nature,  but  belonged  to  the  intellectual  part  of  his 
constitution.  Those  who  framed  such  a  religion  for 
themselves  must  have  been  raised  above  the  pressing 
necessities  and  cares  of  savage  life ;  they  were  not 
absorbed  in  the  task  of  making  their  living,  but  had 
leisure  to  stand  and  admire  the  heavenly  bodies,  and 
to  analyse  the  impressions  made  on  them  by  the  waters 
and  the  thunder.  Nay,  they  had  sufficient  power  of 
abstraction  to  form  a  class  of  such  great  beings,  to 
bestow  on  them  a  common  title,  not  only  one  but 
several  progressive  common  titles,  each  expressing  a 
deeper  reflection  than  the  last.  Thus  did  they  reflect 
on  the  nature  of  the  cosmic  powers,  taken  as  a  class. 
This,  evidently,  is  not  the  beginning  of  religion.  It  is 
the  religion  of  a  comparatively  lofty  civilisation  ;  lower 
stages  of  civilisation,  and  of  religion  also,  must  have 
preceded  this  one.  Even  the  heavenly  bodies,  it  appears 
to  many  scholars,  must  have  been  worshipped  by  men 
who  regarded  them  not  with  aesthetic  admiration  and 
intellectual  satisfaction  only,  but  in  the  light  of  more 
pressing  and  practical  interests. 


46  History  of  Religion  part  i 

We  take  Edward  von  Hartmann  as  the  repre- 
sentative of  those  who,  like  Mr.  Max  Miiller,  trace  the 
origin  of  religion  to  the  worship  of  the  heavenly  powers, 
but  who  carry  back  that  worship  to  the  earliest  stage. 
Writers  who  disagree  with  his  philosophy  take  grave 
exception  to  his  treatment  of  religion,  for  he  regards 
religion,  as  he  considers  consciousness  itself,  not  as  an 
original  and  inseparable  element  of  human  nature,  but 
as  a  thing  acquired  by  man  on  his  way  upwards  ;  and 
he  finds  the  original  motive  of  religion  to  have  lain  in 
egoistic  eudaemonism,  in  the  selfish  desire  of  happiness, 
which  at  that  stage  of  man's  life  determined  all  his 
actions.  The  account,  however,  given  by  Von  Hart- 
mann of  the  beginning  of  religion  in  the  adoration 
of  the  powers  of  nature  is  of  singular  freshness  and 
power,  and  we  can  deduct  from  it,  after  stating  it,  the 
peculiarities  arising  out  of  his  philosophical  system. 

The  first  religion  that  existed  in  the  world  had  for 
its  objects  the  heavenly  powers.  The  objects  worshipped 
are  known,  indeed,  before  religion  begins ;  the  illusions 
of  early  thought  have  settled  on  the  heavenly  powers 
before  they  are  worshipped ;  on  the  outward  object  the 
mind  has  conferred  the  character  of  a  living  and  acting 
being,  which  it  is  henceforth  to  wear.  This  transforma- 
tion, poetic  fancy,  not  mere  logic  and  not  merely 
utilitarian  considerations,  has  brought  about.  But 
religion  only  begins  when  man  sets  himself  to  worship 
these  beings,  and  to  this  he  is  driven  by  his  material 
needs.  Religion  begins  in  a  being  as  yet  without 
religion  and  without  morality.  The  need  for  food  is 
the  motive  that  brings  about  the  change,  for  that  pure 
egoist  early  man  has  seen  that  the  powers  of  nature  are 
able  to  help  or  hinder  him  in  his  search  for  a  living ; 
the  sun  can  set  his  plants  growing  or  can  burn  them  up, 
and  the  thunderstorm  can  revive  them.  His  happiness 
depends  on  these  powers,  and  he  seeks  to  set  up  relations 
with  them.  He  seeks  to  gain  as  an  ally  the  heavenly 
power  who  is  so  able  to  further  or  to  thwart  his  aims ; 


CHAP.  Ill    The  Earliest  Objects  of  Worship  47 

he  makes  known  to  it  his  wishes  by  calling  upon  it,  and 
he  offers  presents  to  it.  He  worships  the  heavenly 
powers,  and  religion  has  begun.  Worship  lends  to  these 
powers,  though  they  were  known  before,  a  fixity  and 
reality  they  did  not  formerly  possess.  Von  Hartmann 
is  inclined  to  trace  all  the  various  worships  of  these 
powers,  which  have  prevailed  in  the  most  different  parts 
of  the  earth,  to  the  same  original  centre,  while  at  the 
same  time  he  maintains  that  even  if  all  the  instances  of 
this  worship  cannot  be  referred  to  any  common  origin, 
it  must  have  arisen  in  this  way,  wherever  men  of  the 
same  nature  dwelt ;  the  psychological  necessity  of  this 
development  accounts  for  the  appearance  of  this  same 
religion  in  different  lands  and  among  dissimilar  races. 

The  worship  of  the  heavenly  powers,  accordingly,  is 
with  this  writer  the  original  religion.  While  admitting 
that  the  worship  of  domestic  spirits  grew  up  in  the  way 
described  by  the  English  anthropologists,  he  denies  that 
Animism  is  ever  a  religion  by  itself  without  being 
combined  with  higher  beliefs.  He  denies  also  that 
fetishism  could  ever  be  an  original  religious  product, 
or  that  men  could  ever  pass  from  having  no  religion  to 
the  religion  of  fetishism.  Wherever  it  appears,  it  is  a 
religion  of  decay.  All  the  religion  in  the  world  has 
come  from  the  worship  of  nature,  which,  whether  arising 
at  one  centre  or  at  several,  spread  over  the  world,  and 
is  to  be  recognised,  clearly  or  dimly,  in  the  religions  of 
all  lands. 

This  view  of  the  origin  of  religion  is  shared  in  the 
main  by  Otto  Pfleiderer,^  and  other  German  writers. 
It  was  from  the  impressions  made  on  man  by  the  powers 
of  nature,  these  scholars  hold,  and  not  from  his  belief 
in  spirits,  that  his  religion  came.  But  it  was  not 
necessarily  due  to  pure  egoism,  as  Von  Hartmann 
represents  ;  the  earliest  religions  need  not,  they  hold, 
have  been  a  mere  attempt  at  bribery.  The  motives 
which  first  caused  man  to  worship  the  heavenly  powers 

^  Philosophy  of  Religion,  vol.  iii.  chap,  i, 


48  History  of  Religion  part  i 

surely  arose  from  other  needs  "than  that  for  food  alone. 
The  intellectual  craving,  the  desire  to  know  the  nature 
of  the  world  he  lived  in,  and  to  refer  himself  to  the 
highest  principle  of  it,  as  far  as  that  could  be  attained  ; 
the  aesthetic  need,  the  desire  to  have  to  do  with  objects 
which  filled  his  imagination  ;  the  moral  need,  the  desire 
not  to  occupy  a  purely  isolated  position,  but  to  place 
himself  under  some  authority,  and  to  feel  some  obliga- 
tion, these  also,  though  in  the  dimmest  way,  as  matters 
of  presentiment  rather  than  clear  consciousness,  entered 
into  the  earliest  worship  of  the  heavenly  powers.  This 
view  has  the  great  advantage  over  that  of  Von  Hart- 
mann,  that  it  makes  the  development  of  religion  con- 
tinous  from  the  first,  instead  of  representing  it  as  being 
originally  a  purely  selfish  thing,  into  which  the  character 
of  affection  and  devotion  only  entered  at  some  subse- 
quent stage.  If  man's  nature  is  essentially  religious, 
then  all  that  constitutes  religion  must  have  been  with 
him  from  the  first,  in  however  unconscious  and  un- 
developed form. 

Conclusion. — We  have  enumerated  the  different  kinds 
of  gods  worshipped  by  early  man — fetishes,  spirits,  the 
powers  of  nature.  We  have  found  a  general  agreement 
that  fetishism  is  not  an  original  form  of  religion,  but  a 
product  of  the  decay  of  higher  forms  in  unfavourable 
conditions.  As  to  the.  other  two  kinds  of  deities,  it  is 
impossible  to  deny  that  gods  have  been  formed  from 
the  very  first  in  each  of  these  two  ways.  The  domestic 
worship  of  the  early  world  cannot  be  derived  from 
nature-worship,  but  grew  out  of  the  belief  awakened 
in  early  man,  by  the  familiar  experiences  mentioned 
above.  That  the  greater  nature-worship,  on  the  other 
hand,  can  be  derived  from  the  belief  in  spirits  is  an 
assertion  which  can  never  be  proved,  or  even  made 
probable ;  that  it  arose  from  the  impressions  produced 
on  early  man  by  the  great  objects  and  forces  of  nature, 
is  a  thing  we  can  understand  and  believe.  The  minor 
nature  worship  is   also   a   very  intelligible  thing,  eveji 


CHAP,  in    The  Earliest  Objects  of  Worship  49 

without  Mr.  Tylor's  theory  of  souls  to  explain  it.  What 
more  natural  than  that  the  savage  should  worship  the 
great  oak  or  the  waterfall,  or  should  think  himself 
surrounded  by  invisible  beings,  even  if  he  did  not  frame 
the  latter  on  the  model  of  the  human  soul  ?  We  arrive 
therefore  at  the  conclusion  that  with  the  exception  of 
the  doctrines  about  death  and  the  abode  of  spirits,  we 
must  regard  the  worship  of  nature  as  the  root  of  the 
world's  religion. 

We  must  beware,  however,  of  imputing  to  the  thoughts 
of  early  men  about  their  gods,  any  such  qualities  as 
consistency  or  regularity.  The  power  of  holding  at  one 
and  the  same  time  religious  beliefs  which  are  incon- 
sistent with  each  other,  is  one  which  even  in  the  most 
developed  religions  is  by  no  means  wanting ;  and  how 
much  more  was  this  the  case  among  men  who  lived 
before  there  was  any  exact  thought !  The  savage  could 
have  a  variety  of  gods  of  very  different  natures,  who 
formed  in  his  mind  quite  a  happy  family.  When  he 
found  a  new  god,  that  did  not  oblige  him  to  part 
with  any  old  one ;  it  was  one  god  he  was  seeking,  but 
he  could  not  settle  on  one  god  as  yet,  when  there  were 
so  many  beings  with  a  good  claim  to  the  position.  He 
made  his  gods  not  out  of  nothing,  but  out  of  a  great 
variety  of  experiences  and  impressions,  and  they  acted 
and  reacted  on  each  other  in  an  endless  variety  of  ways. 
One  god  came  to  the  front  here  and  another  there ;  an 
object  was  deified  here  from  one  reason  and  there  from 
another ;  new  gods  in  time  turned  old  and  were  less 
thought  of  while  forgotten  gods  of  former  days  came 
back  to  memory  and  were  worshipped  once  more.  End- 
less change,  endless  recurrences  of  growth  and  of  decay 
filled  up  those  great  spaces  and  periods,  measureless  and 
trackless  almost  as  the  expanses  of  the  ocean,  that  were 
covered  by  the  prehistoric  life  of  mankind. 


D 


50  History  of  Religion  part  i 


Books  Recommended 

Jevons,  Introduction  to  the  History  of  Religion,  1896. 

E.    S.    Haitland,    in   Proceedings  of  Oxford   Congress  of   the  History  of 
Religion,  p.  21,  sqq. 

Of  the  large  class  of  books  reporting  the  manners  and  beliefs  of  special 
savage  races  we  may  specify — 

D.  G.  Brinton,  The  Myths  of  the  New  Woild,  1896. 

W.  W.  Gill,  Myths  and  Songs  from  the  South  Pacific,  1876. 

Kingsley,  Miss,   West  African  Studies,  1 899. 

Callaway,  The  Religious^Systein  of  the  Aniazuht,  1863-72. 

Duff  Macdonald,  Africana,  the  Heart  of  Heathen  Africa,  1S82. 

G.  Grey,  Journals  of  Two  Expeditions  of  Discovery  in  North  -  Western 

and  Western  Australia,  1 841. 
Spencer  and  Gilpen,  Native  Tribes  of  Central  Australia,  ^899. 


CHAPTER   IV 

EARLY  DEVELOPMENTS — BELIEF 

We  have  seen  from  what  materials  early  man  made  his 
gods.  As  the  gods  differed  in  their  origin,  they  differed 
also  from  the  very  first  in  the  mode  of  their  develop- 
ment. The  great  nature -gods  gave  rise  to  one  kind 
of  religion,  and  the  minor  nature -gods  to  another,  the 
thought  of  the  departed  members  of  the  household  to 
a  third.  But  these  various  religions  could  not  develop 
side  by  side  without  influencing  each  other.  These 
different  worships  began  in  the  very  earliest  times  to 
get  mixed  up  together ;  there  is  none  of  the  great 
religions  which  we  do  not  find  to  be  a  combination  of 
them.  It  will  be  well  to  consider  them  in  the  first 
place  separately. 

I.  Growth  of  the  Great  Gods. — Taking  them  in  the 
order  we  have  already  followed,  we  come  first  to  the 
great  nature-worship,  of  which  heaven,  the  sun,  the 
moon,  the  stars,  dawn  and  sunset,  and  then  the  phe- 
nomena of  the  weather,  rain,  storm,  and  thunder  and 
lightning,  are  the  objects.  It  cannot  be  too  clearly 
borne  in  mind  that  what  was  worshipped  was  origin- 
ally the  natural  object  itself,  regarded,  after  the  earliest 
habit  of  thought,  as  living.  To  heaven  itself,  to  the 
sun  as  he  rose  or  set,  to  the  storm  itself,  men  addressed 
prayers  and  made  offerings ;  and  in  many  quarters, 
both  among  savages  and  in  the  great  religions,  the 
same  thing  occurs  to  this  day. 

But   it  was   impossible   for   man   to   stop  here,   his 

51 


52  History  of  Religion  part  i 

imagination  would  not  allow  him  to  do  so.  In  some 
races,  imagination  was  more  active  than  in  others,  but 
nowhere  was  it  quite  inoperative  ;  and  so  it  happened 
that  man  was  led,  here  to  a  greater  there  to  a  less 
extent,  beyond  the  direct  and  simple  adoration  of  the 
powers  of  nature.  When  he  began  to  give  them  names, 
a  first  and  a  great  step  was  taken  in  advance  of  the 
original  simplicity.  A  name  is  a  power ;  if  it  is  any- 
thing more  than  a  mere  title  or  label,  and  all  primitive 
names  are  more  than  this,  it  brings  with  it  associations 
of  its  own,  and  thus  men  are  led  to  ascribe  to  the  object 
indicated  by  the  name,  a  new  character  and  new  powers. 
They  proceed  to  argue  about  the  name  and  draw  con- 
clusions from  it  as  to  the  nature  of  the  being  they 
worship,  and  so  come  to  think  of  their  deity  in  quite 
a  different  manner.  Even  to  classify  objects  together 
and  give  them  a  common  title,  "  the  bright  ones,"  or 
"  the  living  ones,"  as  the  early  Aryans  did,  gives  them 
an  independent  position  of  their  own,  and  tempts  the 
imagination  to  go  further  in  describing  them.  Striving 
to  find  names  for  those  beings  he  worships  and  thinks 
about  so  much,  early  man  gives  them  the  names  of 
living  creatures  with  whom  he  is  familiar,  and  in  this 
way  he  brings  them  much  nearer  to  himself,  and  at  the 
same  time  appears  to  himself  to  know  a  great  deal 
more  about  them.  The  moon,  for  example,  has  horns, 
the  moon  is  a  cow.  Heaven  is  over  all,  heaven  is  a 
father.  And  as  he  knows  all  about  a  cow,  and  all 
about  a  father,  he  at  once  has  these  deities  made  much 
more  real  to  him,  they  have  an  independent  existence 
to  him.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  he  has  got  some- 
thing more  in  his  deity  than  there  is  in  the  natural 
object.  It  is  no  longer  the  mere  naked  heaven  or  the 
mere  moon  he  worships  ;  but  these  beings  with  addi- 
tions made  to  them  by  his  own  imagination. 

As  time  goes  on  the  additions  grow  more  and  more. 
Having  got  living  persons  for  his  deities,  early  man 
readily    goes   on    to    weave   their   histories   and   their 


CHAP.  IV        Early  Developments — Belief  53 

relations.  If  the  moon  is  a  cow,  the  sun  is  a  bull 
chasing  her  round  the  sky.  This  is  an  instance  of  a 
principle  which  obtains  in  many  at  least  of  the  early 
religions  and  which  it  is  important  to  remember,  viz. 
that  the  powers  of  nature  were  first  identified  with 
animals.  The  zoomorphic  stage  of  the  nature  -  gods 
comes  before  the  anthropomorphic  {cf.  the  signs  of  the 
zodiac),  and  in  many  savage  tribes  it  still  survives. 

But  it  is  when  the  gods  begin  to  be  thought  of  after 
the  likeness  of  human  beings  that  the  decisive  step  is 
made  in  their  development.  If  heaven  is  a  father,  it 
is  easy  to  go  on  from  that.  Earth  will  be  the  corre- 
sponding mother  (an  idea  found  all  over  the  world) ; 
and  all  men  will  be  their  children.  If  the  sun  is  in- 
vested with  a  name  of  masculine  gender  (but  the  sun 
is  frequently  feminine),  he  must  do  feats  becoming 
such  a  character.  If  the  storm  is  a  male  god,  he  will 
be  a  warrior  or  a  huntsman.  Thus  the  god  acquires 
a  personal  character  and  an  independent  movement ; 
what  is  told  about  him  has  reference,  of  course,  to  the 
natural  object  he  sprang  from,  or  the  season  with 
which  he  is  connected  ;  but  the  deity  is  becoming 
more  and  more  separate  from  the  natural  object,  and 
acquiring  a  character  and  history  of  his  own.  The 
stories  connected  with  the  god  vary  according  to  the 
habits  and  the  imaginations  of  different  peoples ;  in 
some  cases  the  gods  remain  pure  and  exalted  beings, 
in  others  savage  and  indecent  myths  are  accumu- 
lated around  them,  and  these  primitive  myths  adhere 
to  their  persons  long  after  they  themselves  have  felt 
an  upward  tendency  and  acquired  a  civilised  char- 
acter with  the  moral  elevation  of  their  peoples.  We 
shall  see  in  many  instances  how  the  nature-gods  were 
personified,  made  into  beasts,  made  into  men,  and  sur- 
rounded with  myths  and  legend.s.  That  is  the  natural 
history  of  the  nature-gods ;  the  process  through  which 
they  must  pass  if  they  grow  at  all. 

Polytheism. — Another  general  feature  of  the  worship 


54  History  of  Religion  part  i 

of  the  great  natural  objects  has  to  be  mentioned.  Each 
(god  has  a  history  of  his  own  ;  he  has  grown  up  separ- 
'ately  as  men  concentrated  their  attention  upon  him. 
But  as  one  god  grows  up  after  another,  or  as  the  gods 
who  grow  up  in  two  countries  are  afterwards  brought 
together,  it  comes  to  pass  that  there  are  many  of  them, 
and  none  of  them  is  necessarily  supreme.  What  is  the 
worshipper  to  do?  The  least  reflection  will  convince 
us  that  in  any  act  of  worship  man  fixes  his  attention 
on  one  object  only.  That  belongs  to  the  very  nature 
of  religion  ;  as  a  child  could  not  treat  several  men  at 
once  as  its  father,  nor  a  servant  be  equally  faithful  to 
several  masters,  so  man  naturally  tends  to  have  one 
god.  He  turns  to  the  highest  he  knows,  who  is  most 
likely  to  be  able  to  help  him,  and  there  cannot  be  two 
highests,  but  only  one.  But  man's  position  in  the  early 
world  does  not  allow  him  to  be  true  to  this  religious 
instinct.  As  he  sees  one  aspect  of  the  world  to-day, 
and  another  to-morrow,  he  cannot,  when  his  god  is  a 
power  of  nature,  always  see  the  same  god  before  him. 
But  can  he  not  worship  another  god  when  the  first  one 
is  out  of  sight  and  out  of  mind  ?  Though  he  worshipped 
heaven  yesterday,  can  he  not  worship  the  sun  to-day, 
or  the  storm,  or  the  great  sea  ?  And  though  the  former 
generation  worshipped  one  of  these  beings  in  the  fore- 
most place,  may  not  the  existing  generation  devote 
itself  principally  to  another  ?  That  power  does  not 
cease  to  be  a  deity  which  is  not  immediately  before  his 
mind.  It  is  still  a  deity,  and  in  a  while  he  will  turn 
to  it  again,  and  make  it  first.  Thus  it  comes  about 
"'  by  inevitable  logic  that  when  man  gets  his  gods  from 
nature,  he  has  a  number  of  them.  When  he  gets  a 
new  god  he  does  not  deny  the  god  he  had  before ;  he 
is  not  yet  in  a  position  to  conclude  that  there  can  only 
be  one  god.  When  he  is  worshipping  he  feels  as  if 
there  were  only  one  ;  but  this  feeling  applies  at  different 
times  to  a  number  of  different  beings,  and  from  such 
inconsistency  he  lacks  the  power  to  free  himself.     The 


CHAP.  IV        Early  Developments — Belief  55 

other  is  a  god  too ;  all  the  gods  he  has  ever  worshipped 
he  may  on  occasion  worship  again.  Nor  can  he  refuse 
to  recognise  the  gods  of  others  ;  to  them  no  doubt  they 
are  gods,  if  not  to  him  ;  they  are  beings  of  the  same 
class  with  his  god.  And  thus  early  man  is  a  polytheist. 
Polytheism  is  a  complex  product ;  it  is  the  addition 
to  each  other  of  a  number  of  cults  which  have  grown 
up  separately. 

In     Polytheism,    however,    very    different    religious 
positions  are  possible.    Men  may  feel  that  the  whole  set 
of  the  gods  in  whose  existence  they  believe  have  claims 
on  them,  and  may  regard  themselves  as  worshippers  of 
them  all,  resorting,  as  feeling  and  old  association  moves 
them,  now  to  one  and  now  to  another,  or  defining  the 
places   or   occasions   at  which   each  of  them  is  to  be 
sought,  or   in  som.e   other  way  adjusting  their  various 
claims  ;   or,  on  the  other  hand,  while  believing  in  the 
existence  of  many  gods,  they  may  confine  their  worship  ^ 
to  one.     A  man  knows  that  there  are  many  gods,  but 
says  that  he  has  only  to  do  with  one  of  them.     This 
is   a   religious    position   very   frequently   met   with    in 
antiquity.     A  circle  of  gods  is  believed  in,  but  one  of 
them  comes  into  prominence  at  a  time  and  is  worshipped 
as  supreme.    This  is  called  Kathenotheism  :  the  worship 
of  one  god  at  a  time.     The  title  was  invented  by  Mr. 
Max    Muller,  who  also  gives  the  title  of  Henotheism 
to  that  position  in  which  many  gods  are  believed  in 
as  existing,   but  worship   is   given  to  only  one.     The 
following  are  examples  of  the  various  positions: — 
The  language  of  Polytheism  is — "  Father  Zeus  that 
rulest  from  Ida,  most  glorious,  most  great,  and 
thou  sun  that  seest  all  things,  and  ye  rivers  and 
thou  earth,  and  ye  that  in  the  underworld  punish 
whosoever    sweareth   falsely — be   ye   witnesses." 
— Iliad,  iii.  280. 
The  Jews  at  the  time  of  Josiah  were  accomplished 
polytheists,  as  we  may  see  from  the  catalogue  of  the 
worships   suppressed    at   Jerusalem    by   that   monarch, 


56  History  of  Religion  part  i 

2  Kings  xxiii.  The  gods  of  each  of  the  surrounding 
tribes  appear  to  have  been  worshipped  there,  and  the 
old  gods  of  the  separate  tribes  and  families  of  Israel 
appear  to  have  been  kept  up. 

Katheno theism. — The  Vedic  poets,  as  we  shall  see, 
speak  of  the  god  they  are  immediately  addressing  as 
supreme,  and  heap  upon  him  all  the  highest  attributes, 
while  not  thinking  of  denying  the  divinity  of  other 
gods. 

The  language  of  Henotheism  is — "  Thou,  O  Jehovah, 
art  far  above  all  the  earth  ;  thou  art  exalted  far 
above  all  gods "  (Ps.  xcvii.  9).     "  There  is  none 
like  unto  Thee  among  the  gods,  O  Lord !  .  .  . 
Thou    art    great,   and    doest   wondrous   things  : 
Thou  art  God  alone"  (Ps.  Ixxxvi.  8,  10).     Here 
the  other  gods  are  recognised  as  existing,  but 
only  one  is  worshipped.     Compare  also  St  Paul  : 
"  There  are  gods  many,  and  lords  many,  but  to 
us  there  is  one  God  "  (i  Cor.  viii.  5,  6). 
The  language  of  Monotheism  is — "All  the  gods  of 
the    peoples    are   idols:    but   Jehovah   made  the 
heavens "   (Ps.   xcvi.  5),  and   "  Thou    shalt  have 
no  other  god  before  Me." 
A  further  religious  position  to  be  noticed  here  is  that 
of  Dualism.      Not   all    dualism    comes    from    nature- 
worship,  but  in  a  land  where  a  beneficent  and  a  harm- 
ful   natural    force  are  in  striking   antagonism  to  each 
other,  this  may  take  place.     Man,  when  he  interprets 
the  kindly  influences  of  nature  as  the  blessings  of  the 
good  god,  naturally  interprets  the  agencies  which  blight 
or  ruin  as  being  also  the  manifestation  of  a  living  power, 
but  of  an  evil  one.     Thanks  to  the  good  god  alternate, 
in  this  case,  with  efforts  to  counteract  or  to  appease 
the  bad  one  ;  if  the  two  appear  to  be  nearly  balanced, 
then   neither   is  supreme,  and  both  overawe  the  mind 
and  receive  worship.     But  in  general  we  may  remark 
that    the   greater   nature-worship    is    of    an    elevating 
tendency.     It   brings   man  into  relations  with  powers 


CHAP.  IV        Early  Developments — Belief  57 

which  are  truly  great,  and  places  him  even  physically 
in  the  position  of  looking  up,  not  down.  Where  the 
nature-power  is  a  harsh  one,  a  scorching  sun,  a  tem- 
pestuous sea,  the  self-command  and  self-sacrifice  called 
out  by  the  worship  of  them  may  be,  if  not  carried  to 
extremes,  a  bracing  discipline  ;  but  with  some  excep- 
tions the  nature-gods  are  good,  and  have  to  do  with 
light  and   with  kindness, 

2.  The  Minor  Nature  -  worship. — The  worship  of 
the  great  powers  of  nature  has  a  universal  character ; 
it  can  be  carried  on  anywhere  ;  wandering  tribes  carry 
it  with  them  ;  heaven  and  the  sun  and  the  winds  can 
be  addressed  in  every  land.  The  minor  nature-worship 
differs  from  it  in  this  respect  :  an  animal  is  only  wor- 
shipped in  the  country  where  it  occurs,  and  the  worship 
of  the  tree,  the  well,  the  stone,  is  altogether  local. 
With  this  local  nature-worship  the  world  was,  in  early 
times,  thickly  overspread ;  and  manifold  survivals  of 
it  are  still  to  be  found  even  in  lands  where  the  primi- 
tive religion  has  been  longest  superseded.  This  is  the 
religion  of  local  observance  and  local  legend,  which 
clings  to  the  face  of  a  country  in  spite  of  public  changes 
of  creed,  and,  when  the  old  religion  has  departed,  is 
found  to  have  secured  a  shelter  for  itself  in  the  new 
one. 

In  this  minor  nature-worship  which  spreads  its  net- 
work over  all  the  early  world,  the  character  of  primitive 
society  is  clearly  represented  ;  the  small  communities 
have  their  small  local  worships — each  clan,  almost  each 
kraal,  has  its  shrine,  its  god,  and  limits  itself  to  its  own 
sacred  things.  Religion  is  a  bond  connecting  together 
the  mem.bers  of  small  groups  of  men,  but  separating 
them  from  the  members  of  other  groups.  The  follow- 
ing are  some  of  the  more  important  developments 
of  this. 

ia)  The  Worship  of  Animals. — Primitive  man  had  to 
hold  his  own  against  the  animals  by  force  of  strength 
and  cunning ;  and  he  was  well  acquainted  with  them. 


58  History  of  Religion  part  i 

He  respected  them  for  the  qualities  in  which  they 
excelled  him,  the  hare  for  his  swiftness,  the  beaver  for 
his  skill,  the  fox  for  his  craftiness.  What  he  worshipped, 
however,  was  not  the  individuals  of  a  species,  but  the 
species  as  a  whole,  typified  perhaps  in  a  great  hare  or 
a  great  fox,  the  mythical  first  parent  of  the  species, 
and  possessing  its  qualities  in  a  supreme  degree.  It 
happened  apparently  over  the  whole  world,  with  the 
exception  of  most  branches  of  the  Aryan  family,  that 
men  at  a  very  early  stage  regarded  themselves  as 
related  by  the  tie  of  descent,  some  to  one  species  of 
animals  or  of  plants  and  some  to  another.  From  this 
belief  tribes  took  their  names,  each  member  tattooing 
the  figure  of  his  animal  ancestor  on  his  person.  The 
Bechuanas,  for  example,  are  divided  into  crocodile-men, 
fish-,  ape-,  buffalo-,  elephant-,  and  lion-men,  and  so  on. 
The  hairy  or  scaly  ancestor  is  the  "  totem  "  of  the  tribe, 
and  they  consider  that  animal  sacred,  and  will  not  eat 
the  flesh  of  it.  All  who  bear  the  same  totem  regard 
each  other  as  of  kindred  blood,  as  descended  from  the 
same  ancestor.  The  totem  may  also  be  a  vegetable,  in 
which  case  no  member  of  the  stock  will  gather  or  eat  it. 
Totemism  is  to  be  seen  in  operation  at  the  present 
day  in  various  parts  of  the  world.  North  America  is, 
perhaps,  its  classic  land  in  modern  times.  It  is,  how- 
ever, a  stage  of  society  through  which  all  races  have 
at  one  time  or  another  passed.  According  to  the  latest 
investigations  totemism  is  not  to  be  regarded  as  itself 
a  religion  ;  the  totem  being  regarded  not  as  a  superior 
but  as  an  equal.  Its  influence  on  the  early  growth 
of  religion,  however,  was  great,  and  widely  ramified.^ 
From  this  two  important  consequences  follow  which 
will  meet  us  again  and  again  in  our  study  of  the  great 

^  J.  G.  Frazer,  "Totemism,"  in  the  Encyclopcedia  Britannica,  vol. 
xxiii.,  and  now  his  Totemism  and  Exoga'ny.  It  was  formerly  held  that  the 
Semites  were  an  exception,  having  never  passed  through  the  totcmistic 
stage.  Mr.  Robertson  Smith,  in  his  Religion  of  the  Semites,  maintains  that, 
though  they  are  past  that  stage  when  we  first  know  them,  the  traces  of  it  are 
apparent  in  their  institutions,  and  that  their  sacrifices  especially  are  based 
on  ideas  belonging  to  it.      Wellhausen  does  not  agree  with  him  in  this. 


CHAP.  IV        Early  Developments — Belief  59 

religions.  The  first  is  animal-worship,  a  phenomenon 
of  frequent  occurrence  and  of  perplexing  import.  Mr. 
M'Lennan  has  shown  that  much  at  least  of  the  wide- 
spread worship  of  animals  is  to  be  traced  to  an  early 
totem-stage  of  society,^  when  animals  were  held  sacred 
as  the  ancestors  of  men.  In  the  second  place,  totemism 
explains  the  view  taken  in  the  early  world  of  the  nature 
of  religious  fellowship.  In  modern  times  people  regard 
each  other  as  brothers  in  religion  when  they  believe  the 
same  doctrines.  It  is  belief,  an  intellectual  or  spiritual 
agreement,  that  binds  them  together.  The  ancient 
religious  union  was  of  a  quite  different  nature.  People 
then  regarded  each  other  as  brothers  because  they  were 
of  the  same  blood,  descended  from  the  same  ancestor. 
In  the  Bible  the  Hebrews  are  all  descended  from 
Abraham,  the  Edomites  from  Esau,  etc.  That  is  the 
necessary  condition  of  brotherhood  in  early  times  ;  only 
those  could  join  in  a  religious  rite  who  were  of  the  same 
blood.  For  men  of  another  blood  there  was  another 
worship,  another  god.  It  is  an  earlier  stage  of  this 
view,  when  men  are  of  the  same  worship  because  they 
are  descended  from  the  same  animal,  and  when  they 
worship  that  animal. 

{b)  Trees,  Wells,  Stones. — The  worship  of  each  of 
these  three  is  in  itself  a  great  subject,  and  we  can  do 
no  more  than  mention  the  leading  views  which  appear 
to  have  entered  into  them.  Mannhardt  in  his  Feld- 
und  Waldkulte  and  Frazer  in  The  Golden  Bough  have 
studied  the  survivals  of  tree  -  worship  in  the  local 
customs  of  the  peasantry  of  Europe.  Early  man 
appears  to  have  worshipped  trees  as  wonderful  living 
beings ;  but  his  thought  soon  advanced  to  the  concep- 
tion of  a  tree-spirit,  of  which  the  tree  itself  was  either 
the  body  or  the  dwelling,  and  which  possessed  various 
powers,  such  as  that  of  commanding  rain,  or  that  of 
causing   fertility   in    plants   or  in   animals.     From    the 

'  Fortnightly  Reznew,  1869-70.  See  also  Mr.  Lang's  Myth,  Ritual  and 
Religion  in  many  passages. 


6o  History  of  Religion  part  i 

tree-spirit,  again,  the  tree-god  was  further  formed,  a 
being  who  was  able  to  quit  the  sacred  tree  or  who 
presided  over  many  trees.  Of  these  beliefs  the  fast- 
decaying  usages  of  the  Maypole  and  the  Harvest  May 
still  remind  us. 

The  well,  in  a  similar  manner,  may  first  have  been 
worshipped  in  and  for  itself,  and  then  a  nymph  may 
have  been  added  to  it.  The  worship  of  wells  consisted 
in  throwing  precious  articles  into  them,  or  hanging 
such  offerings  on  the  surrounding  trees,  and  asking  some 
boon  from  the  deity .^  Rivers  and  lakes  were  also  held 
sacred.  The  worship  of  stones,  that  is  of  stones  not 
treated  by  art,  but  regarded  as  sacred  in  the  form  in 
which  they  were  found,  was  widely  diffused  among 
early  races ;  but  this  is  a  subject  on  which  light  is 
still  called  for.  The  Caaba  of  Mecca  and  the  stone  of 
the  temple  of  Diana  at  Ephesus  are  famous  isolated 
instances  of  it;  but  it  has  been  suggested  that  the 
standing  stones  or  menhirs  which  are  found  in  every 
part  of  Europe,  and  in  the  south  and  west  of  Asia, 
were  objects  of  this  worship.  In  Palestine  these  stones 
are  not  found,  though  they  occur  in  the  neighbouring 
lands ;  and  this  is  attributed  by  Major  Conder  2  to  the 
zeal  of  the  orthodox  kings,  who,  we  know  from  the 
Bible,  destroyed  all  the  monuments  of  idolatry  in  their 
territory. 

What  is  common  to  these  cults,  and  cannot  be  dis- 
regarded, is  their  local  nature.  This  gives  its  colour 
to  all  the  religion  of  early  man.  The  god  of  the  sacred 
tree  cannot  be  worshipped  anywhere  else  than  where  the 
tree  stands,  and  he  who  would  have  his  wishes  granted 
by  the  well  must  come  to  it.  The  deity  of  this  kind  of 
religion  has  his  abode  at  a  certain  spot,  and   he  is  a 

*  In  Mr.  G.  A.  Gomme's  Ethnology  in  Folklore  many  sacred  wells 
are  mentioned  which  are  still,  or  were  lately,  frequented  in  England. 
St.  Wallach's  well  and  bath,  in  the  parish  of  Glass,  Morayshire,  was 
much  resorted  to  within  living  memory. 

2  Scottish  Review,  1894,  vol.  xvii.  p.  33,  "  Rude  Stone  Monuments 
In  Syria." 


CHAP.  IV        Early  Developments — Belief  6i 

fixed,  not  a  movable  deity.  There  is  a  story,  or  a 
set  of  stories,  connected  with  his  shrine,  and  there  are 
observances  of  one  kind  or  another  to  be  done  there ; 
and  this  goes  on  from  age  to  age.  Now  a  deity  who 
is  fixed  to  one  spot  will  be  worshipped  by  the  people 
who  dwell  around  that  spot.  The  god  will  have  his 
own  people  and  dwell  among  them,  and  they  alone  will 
be  his  worshippers.  And  thus  the  surface  of  the  earth 
comes  to  be  parcelled  out  among  a  number  of  deities, 
each  seated,  like  a  little  prince,  at  his  own  court  among 
his  own  people.  In  passing  from  his  own  home  to  a 
distant  spot,  a  man  will  leave  the  territory  of  his  own 
god  and  enter  on  that  of  another,  and  as  the  god  can 
only  be  worshipped  at  his  own  shrine,  the  man  will 
leave  his  religion  when  he  leaves  his  home,  and  either 
be  compelled  to  serve  the  gods  of  strangers,  or  to 
perform  no  religious  duties  at  all.^  Thus  the  ideas 
connected  with  totemism  meet  and  harmonise  in  many 
old  countries  with  those  connected  with  local  shrines.^ 
Those  dwelling  around  the  shrine  form  a  kindred  of 
one  blood,  of  which  the  local  god  is  both  the  progenitor 
and  the  living  head.  Religion  is  thus  both  strictly 
tribal  and  strictly  local.  It  is  for  his  brethren  of  the 
tribe,  for  those  in  whose  veins  the  blood  of  the  same 
divine  ancestor  runs,  that  a  man's  enthusiasm  is  kindled 
in  acts  of  worship  ;  it  is  his  duty  to  his  clan  that  he 
then  realises,  the  prosperity  of  his  clan  that  he  desires. 
To  those  of  other  stems  no  religious  bond  unites  him, 
they  are  men  of  another  blood,  of  another  worship. 
His  religious  duty  is  to  love  his  neighbour,  or  fellow- 
tribesman,  to  hate  his  enemy,  the  man  of  another  tribe.  • 
And  on  the  other  hand,  as  religion  consists  in  approaches 
to  a  particular  spot  and  the  performance  of  certain  rites, 
it  is  left  behind  when  these  rites  are  accomplished,  and 

^  Asi  llustrating  this  circle  of  ideas,  compare  the  following  passages  in  the 
Bible:  Genesis  xxviii.  ;  Ruth  i.  i6  ;  i  Sam.  xxvi.  ig;  2  Kings  v.  17  ;  and 
of  a  later  period,  Psalm  xlii. 

^  See  on  this  whole  subject  Mr.  Robertson  Smith's  Religion  0/  the 
Semites. 


62  History  of  Religion  part  i 

the  man  is  away  from  his  god.  The  sanctuary  is  re- 
garded with  extreme  veneration,  often  with  shrinking 
and  terror,  but  distance  makes  a  change,  the  religion 
alters  with  travel,  and  is  left  behind.  This  religion  was 
on  the  whole  a  more  exciting  and  intense  thing  than 
that  of  the  great  nature  powers ;  and  was  far  more 
interwoven  with  social  life ;  but  it  also  presented  the 
greatest  obstacles  to  progress,  limiting  men's  affections 
to  their  own  kin  and  their  own  land,  and  confining 
them  in  an  inveterate  conservatism. 

3.  The  State  after  Death. — The  belief  that  the  human 
spirit  was  not  extinguished  at  the  death  of  the  body, 
but  entered  on  an  existence  without  the  body  some- 
where else,  opened  the  door  to  a  wide  range  of  specula- 
tion ;  and  the  ideas  arrived  at  by  early  man  as  to  the 
place  of  spirits  and  the  life  beyond,  are  a  principal  part 
of  that  antique  religion  of  which  the  great  systems  are 
the  heirs.  The  funeral  practices  of  prehistoric  times, 
when  various  articles  were  placed  in  the  tomb  along 
with  the  body  of  the  departed  hero  or  father,  and 
various  sacrifices  made  to  him  at  his  burial  or  cremation 
and  at  anniversary  festivals  afterwards,  show  that  the 
spirits  of  the  dead  were  conceived  as  carrying  on  the 
same  kind  of  existence  as  they  had  led  here,  though  an 
existence  unsubstantial  and  of  little  power  ;  "  strength- 
less  heads  "  Homer  calls  them.  Food  and  drink  were 
of  use  to  them  ;  for  the  finer  part  of  it  was  supposed 
to  reach  them.  The  taste  of  blood  revived  them ;  and 
various  pleasures  were  possible  to  them.^  This  belief, 
it  will  be  seen,  differs  from  all  the  modern  doctrines  of 
a  continued  existence.  It  is  not  the  resurrection  of  the 
body  that  the  savage  believes  in.  He  knows  well  enough 
that  the  body  does  not  rise  ;  but  he  also  knows  that  the 
spirit  can  exi.st  and  move  and  do  a  number  of  things 
that  were  done  in  life,  without  the  body.  Nor  can  he 
be  said  to  believe  in  the  immortality  of  the  soul.     That 

'  On  this  subject  compare  Mr.  Tylor's  Priinitivi  Culiuie,  twelfth  and 
thirteenth  chapters. 


CHAP.  IV        Early  Developmenis — Belief  63 

term  describes  a  free  and  unfettered  existence  after 
death,  but  to  the  savage  the  spirit  after  death  has  but  a 
troubled  and  frail  existence ;  it  is  tethered  to  certain 
spots  on  the  earth,  known  to  it  formerly  ;  it  cannot  do 
much,  it  lives  under  many  limitations  and  constraints. 
Nor,  again,  can  it  be  said  that  retribution  after  death  is 
a  true  designation  of  the  early  belief  That  may  be 
found  here  and  there  in  early  times,  but  generally  the 
other  life  is  less  under  a  divine  government  than  this 
one ;  death  takes  a  man  away  from  his  god  as  well  as 
from  his  family,  and  the  dead  are  left  to  themselves. 

While,  however,  this  is  the  general  background  of 
primitive  belief  about  the  other  life,  imagination  is  at 
work  on  the  subject  very  early,  and  various  features  of 
that  life  are  touched  with  more  vivid  colours,  here  in 
one  way  and  there  in  another.  The  place  where  the 
departed  stay,  their  occupations,  their  delights,  are 
variously  described ;  the  land  where  they  dwell  is 
modelled  on  a  land  that  is  known,  with  the  addition  of 
ideal  features;  they  do  very  much  what  they  did  on 
earth,  hunt  or  feast,  make  music  or  carry  on  discussions. 
In  some  cases  there  is  a  judgment-seat  before  which  the 
soul  appears  for  its  trial,  and  here  of  course  the  spirit- 
world  must  be  divided  into  two  parts  or  more,  for  the 
reception  of  those  who  are  approved  and  of  those  who 
are  condemned.  The  detailed  description  of  the  abodes 
of  the  blest  and  of  the  damned,  by  no  means  peculiar 
to  Christianity,  are  later  developments  in  the  early 
world.  Hell,  Mr.  Tylor  says,  is  unknown  to  savage 
thought.  The  doctrine  of  transmigration,  however, 
whether  into  plants  or  into  lower  animals,  is  of  early 
growth. 

Growth  of  the  Great  Religions  out  of  these  Beliefs.— 
These  various  developments  of  thought  about  the  gods 
did,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  take  place  in  primitive  times, 
and  that  is  almost  all  that  can  be  said.  In  the  religion 
of  savages  the  various  elements  we  have  so  briefly 
indicated    cross    and    recross    each    other,    in    endless 


64  History  of  Religion  part  i 

combinations ;  none  of  them  is  to  be  found  entirely  by 
itself.  There  is  no  fetish  worship  which  is  not  accom- 
panied by  traces  of  an  early  belief  in  great  gods  ;  there 
is  no  belief  in  great  gods  which  is  not  accompanied  by 
a  belief  in  lower  spirits.  With  regard  to  every  savage 
religion  the  student  has  to  ask  what  the  constituent 
elements  of  it  are,  in  what  way  the  various  beliefs  of 
the  early  world,  beliefs  arising  from  such  different 
sources,  meet  in  it  and  combine  with  one  another. 

In  each  of  the  higher  religions,  too,  tlie  same  questions 
have  to  be  asked.  The  beliefs  which  we  have  sketched 
are  the  materials  out  of  which  they  also  arose.  They 
did  not  originate  the  belief  in  high  gods  with  power 
over  nature,  nor  the  belief  in  the  lesser  spirits  which 
busy  themselves  with  man's  affairs.  They  did  not 
originate  the  belief  in  a  life  after  death,  nor  was  it  left 
to  them  to  appoint  sacred  seasons  in  the  year,  or  to 
consecrate  the  spots  to  which  worship  has  always 
clung.  All  these  beliefs  are  prehistoric,  and  what 
remained  for  the  great  religions  was  not  to  bring  them 
forward  for  the  first  time,  but  to  surround  them  with 
a  new  kind  of  authority,  and  to  establish  as  a  matter 
of  positive  ordinance  or  revelation  what  had  formerly 
grown  up  without  any  ordinance  by  the  unconscious 
work  of  custom,  It  was  not  left  for  any  of  the  great 
founders  to  plant  religion  in  the  world  as  a  new  thing, 
but  only  to  add  to  the  old  religion  new  forms  and  new 
sanctions. 

It  may  be  said  that  if  these  are  the  elements  of  which 
religion  as  a  whole  is  made,  then  religion  arose  at  first 
out  of  illusions.  That  is  no  doubt  true,  in  a  sense.  It 
was  an  illusion  on  the  part  of  early  man  to  suppose 
that  the  powers  of  heaven  were  animated  beings  who 
could  be  his  allies  and  answer  his  appeals ;  it  was 
an  illusion  to  think  that  the  tree  or  the  stone  contained 
a  spirit,  and  an  illusion  to  think  that  men's  spirits  can 
go  and  wander  about  the  earth  by  themselves,  leaving 
their  bodies  untenanted.     But  these  illusions  were  after 


CHAP.  IV       Early  Developments — Belief  65 

all  only  the  outward  and  inadequate  expression  in  which 
the  spirit  of  religion  then  clothed  itself.  Religion  must 
always  express  itself  in  terms  of  the  knowledge  which 
exists  in  the  world  at  a  particular  time ;  and  if  the 
knowledge  is  defective  to  which  the  world  has  attained, 
religious  beliefs  must  share  in  its  defects.  But,  on  the 
other  hand,  religion  is  something  more  than  knowledge  ; 
it  is  also  faith  and  communion,  and  these  can  be  deep 
and  true,  even  when  the  knowledge  which  provides  their 
forms  of  expression  is  greatly  mistaken.  And  when  the 
forms  of  knowledge  in  which  religion  has  clothed  itself 
are  found  to  be  mistaken,  religion  has  power  to  leave 
them  behind  and  to  adopt  other  forms,  as  the  tree  is 
clothed  with  fresh  leaves  in  place  of  those  which  are 
withered. 

Yet  it  would  be  wrong  to  admit  that  even  in  its 
character  as  knowledge  early  religion  was  illusion  and 
no  more.  The  poetic  faculty,  the  faculty  which  prompts 
us  to  find  outside  us  what  we  feel  to  be  within  us  and  to 
assert  its  reality,  led  man  right  and  not  wrong.  What 
he  worshipped  was  not  the  bare  object  which  met  the 
eye  and  ear,  but  the  thing  as  he  conceived  it.  He 
conceived  that  there  was  without  him  that  of  which 
his  inner  consciousness  bore  witness,  an  ideal,  a  being 
not  grasped  by  the  senses,  which  could  help  him,  with 
which  he  could  hold  intercourse,  which  had  the  power 
he  himself  had  not.  This,  not  the  faulty  outward  ex- 
pressions in  which  the  sentiment  clothed  itself,  was  the 
living  and  growing  element  of  his  religion. 

In  addition  to  the  books  cited  in  this  chapter,  we  may  mention — 

C.  Botticher,  Der  Baumkttltiis  der  Hellenen,  1856. 

J.  Ferguson,  Tree  and  Serpent  Worships  186&. 

,,  Rude  Stone  Monuments  in  all  Countries,  1872. 

J.  G.  Fraser,  Totemism  and  Exogamy,  4  vols.  19 10.  An  immense 
collection  of  material  on  the  subject  of  totemism,  with  fresh  con- 
clusions as  to  the  origin  and  meaning  of  the  system. 


CHAPTER  V 

EARLY  DEVELOPMENTS — PRACTICES 

In  early  religion  it  is  important  to  remember  that  belief 
counted  for  much  less  than  it  now  does  ;  a  man's  religion 
>  consisted  in  the  religious  acts  he  did,  and  not  in  the 
beliefs  or  thoughts  he  cherished  about  his  god.  Worship, 
moreover,  is  that  element  of  religion  which  in  all  ages 
and  lands  is  apt  to  advance  most  slowly.  Even  in  times 
of  ferment  of  ideas  and  change  of  belief,  we  often  see 
that  the  worship  of  a  former  time,  be  it  simple  or  stately, 
goes  on  in  its  old  forms,  as  if  it  were  a  thing  that  could 
not  change.  Men  alter  their  beliefs  more  readily  than 
their  habits,  especially  the  habits  connected  with  their 
faith.  If  this  is  the  case  generally,  it  was  much  more 
the  case  in  the  early  world  than  it  is  now.  The  religion 
of  a  shrine  in  old  times  consisted  of  a  certain  story  about 
the  god,  and  certain  acts  done  before  or  near  the  object 
which  represented  him.  There  was  no  compulsion,  how- 
ever, to  believe  the  story  if  a  man  did  the  acts  or  took 
part  in  them.  As  to  his  private  beliefs  no  one  inquired  ; 
if  he  took  part  in  the  proper  acts  of  worship  he  counted 
as  a  religious  man,  unless  he  went  so  far  as  openly  to 
flout  the  current  opinions  of  his  time. 

Nor  were  the  acts  which  went  to  make  up  religion  of 
an  elaborate  or  difficult  nature.  No  minute  ritual  regu- 
lated in  early  times  the  approaches  to  the  deity  ;  they 
were  a  matter  of  common  knowledge,  and  were  fixed 
not  by  law,  which  did  not  yet  exist  in  any  form,  but 
by  public  custom  and  public  opinion.     The  manner  in 

66 


CHAP.  V      Early  Developr7ients — Practices  67 

which  a  god  is  to  be  served  is  known  of  course  to  his 
own  people  who  dwell  around  him  ;  others  do  not 
know  it.  The  immigrants  from  Assyria  had  to  send 
for  a  Hebrew  to  teach  them  the  ritual  of  the  God  of 
Palestine,  as  they  were  on  his  ground  and  did  not 
know  the  right  way  to  worship  Him  (2  Kings  xvii.  24 
sqq?).  It  is  later  that  the  rite  becomes  a  mystery,  known 
only  to  the  professional  guardian  of  the  shrine  or  to 
the  initiated  few.  \ 

Sacrifice  is  an  invariable  feature  of  early  religion. 
Wherever  gods  are  worshipped,  gifts  and  offerings  are 
made  to  them  of  one  kind  or  another.  It  is  in  this  way 
that,  in  antiquity  at  least,  the  relation  with  the  deity 
was  renewed,  if  it  had  been  slackened  or  broken,  or 
strengthened  and  made  sure.  Sacrifice  and  worship  are 
in  the  ancient  world  identical  terms.  The  nature  of  the 
offering  and  the  mode  of  presenting  it  are  infinitely 
various,  but  there  is  always  sacrifice  in  one  form  or 
another.  Different  deities  of  course  receive  different 
gifts ;  the  tree  has  its  roots  watered,  or  trophies  of 
battle  or  of  the  chase  are  hung  upon  its  branches ; 
horses  are  thrown  into  the  sea.  But  of  primitive 
sacrifice  generally  we  may  affirm  that  it  consists  of 
such  food  and  drink  as  men  themselves  partake  of 
Whether  it  be  the  fruit  of  the  field  or  the  firstling  of 
the  flock  that  is  offered  at  the  sacred  stone,  whether  the 
offering  is  burnt  before  the  god  or  set  down  and  left 
near  him,  or  whether  he  is  summoned  to  come  down 
from  the  sky  or  to  travel  from  the  far  country  to  which 
he  may  have  gone,  it  is  of  the  materials  of  a  meal  that 
the  sacrifice  consists.  In  some  cases  it  appears  to  be 
thought  that  the  god  consumes  the  offering,  as  when 
Fire  is  worshipped  with  offerings  which  he  burns  up, 
or  when  a  fissure  in  the  earth  closes  upon  a  victim ; 
but  in  most  cases  it  is  only  the  spirit  or  finer  essence 
of  the  sacrifice  that  the  god  enjoys ;  the  rest  he  leaves 
to  men.  And  thus  sacrifice  is  generally  accompanied 
by  a  meal.     The  offering  is  presented  to  the  god  whole, 


68  History  of  Religion  tart  i 

but  the  worshippers  help  to  eat  it.  The  god  gets  the 
savour  of  it  which  rises  into  the  air  towards  him,  while 
the  more  material  part  is  devoured  below.  Every  sacri- 
fice is  also  a  festival.^  If  this  be  the  case  it  is  unneces- 
sary to  spend  much  time  in  considering  a  number  of 
theories  formerly  regarded  with  favour  as  to  the  original 
meaning  and  intention  of  sacrifice.  The  view  that  it  is 
originally  simply  a  bribe  to  the  deity  to  induce  him  to 
afford  some  needed  help,  receives  a  good  deal  of  counte- 
nance from  primitive  expressions.  " Do  ut  des"  "  I  give 
to  thee  that  thou  mayest  give  to  me."  "  Here  is  butter, 
give  us  cows  ! "  "  By  gifts  are  the  gods  persuaded,  by 
gifts  great  kings."  Was  early  sacrifice  then  simply  a 
business  transaction,  in  which  man  bringing  a  prayer 
to  the  deity  brought  a  gift  too,  as  he  was  accustomed 
to  do  to  the  great  ones  of  the  earth,  in  order  that  the 
deity  might  be  well  disposed  towards  him  and  grant  his 
petition  ?  Even  if  this  was  the  case,  if  sacrifice  were 
offered  with  the  direct  and  almost  the  avowed  intention 
of  getting  good  value  for  it,  yet  if  it  takes  the  form  of  a 
meal,  it  is  lifted  above  the  most  sordid  form  of  bribery. 
There  is  a  difference  between  slipping  money  into  a 
man's  hand  and  asking  him  to  dinner,  even  if  the  object 
aimed  at  be  in  both  cases  the  same;  and  when  the 
invitations  are  numerous  and  formal,  there  must  be  a 
moral,  not  an  immoral,  relation  between  the  two  parties. 
Where  the  sacrifice  is  a  meal,  intercourse  is  sought  for ; 
a  certain  sympathy  exists  between  worshipper  and 
worshipped  ;  they  stand  to  each  other  not  only  in  the 
relation  of  briber  and  bribed,  buyer  and  seller,  but  in 
that  of  patron  and  client,  or  of  father  and  son. 

But  granting  that  early  sacrifice  was  for  the  most 
part  a  meal,  an  observance,  with  a  social  element  in 
it,  between  the  god  and  the  worshipper,  what  was  the 
object  of  this  meal,  what  was  the  motive  for  holding  it  ? 

1  Mr.  Tylor  {Prim.  Cult.  vol.  ii.  p.  397)  states  that  "sacrifices  to 
deities,  from  the  lowest  to  the  highest  levels  of  culture,  consist,  to  the 
extent  of  nine-tenths  or  more,  of  gifts  of  food  and  sacred  banquets." 


CHAP.  V      Early  Developme7its — Practices  69 

In  some  cases  it  looks  as  if  the  intention  had  been  to 
strengthen  the  god,  and  to  make  him  more  vigorous,  so 
that  he  might  be  able  to  do  what  was  wanted  of  him. 
In  the  Vedic  hymns  this  motive  undeniably  is  to  be 
met  with.  The  notion  is  by  no  means  unknown  in 
early  thought,  that  not  only  does  man  need  God,  but 
that  God  is  also  dependent  on  man,  and  capable  of 
being  aided  and  encouraged.  In  rites  which  are  not 
strictly  sacrifices,  we  notice  men  seeking  to  sympathise 
with  their  gods  in  what  the  gods  are  doing,  and  to  take 
a  share  in  it  by  doing  similar  things  themselves.  The 
Christmas  and  Easter  fires  in  pagan  times  connected 
with  the  worship  of  the  sun,  are  examples  of  this,  and 
many  other  instances  might  be  cited. 

This,  however,  is  not  the  principal  motive  of  early 
sacrifice.  All  the  incidents  of  it  suggest  that  it  is  not 
merely  a  thing  offered  to  the  deity,  but  a  thing  in  which 
man  takes  part ;  if  it  is  a  meal,  it  is  one  of  which  the 
god  and  the  worshippers  partake  in  common.  In  China 
the  ancestors  are  invited  to  the  family  feast ;  their  place 
is  set  for  them  ;  their  share  in  the  feast  is  placed  before 
them.  In  the  Iliad}  we  have  an  account  of  a  solemn 
religious  act :  after  prayers  the  victims  were  slaughtered, 
choice  slices  were  cut  from  them  and  cooked  at  the 
fire  by  the  worshippers,  who  then  ate  and  drank  their 
fill;  after  this  "all  day  long  they  worshipped  the  god 
with  music,  singing  the  beautiful  pa^an  to  Apollo,  and 
his  heart  was  glad  to  hear."  In  the  Bible  we  know 
that  the  blood  is  poured  out  for  the  Deity,  and  in 
various  sacrifices  the  parts  He  is  to  have  are  specified, 
while  the  rest  is  to  be  eaten  by  the  priests.  In  the 
earlier  sacrifices  of  the  Hebrews  there  are  no  priests; 
those  who  present  the  sacrifice  consume  it  after  the 
act  of  presentation,  and  the  occasion  is  one  of  mirth 
and  jollity,  as  at  a  banquet  (i  Sam.  ix.  12,  ij,  and 
the  following  description ;  see  also  Exod.  xxxii.  5, 
6).     In  fact  it  is  a  banquet.     This  is  specially  plain  in 

1  I.  457  :qq- 


70  History  of  Religion  part  i 

the  sacrifices  of  the  Semites,  as  Mr.  Robertson  Smith 
has  shown.  Early  Semitic  usage  exhibits  clearly  how- 
sacrifice  was  an  act  of  communion,  in  which  the  god 
and  his  human  family  proclaimed  and  renewed  their 
unity  with  each  other.  The  details  may  differ  in  other 
races,  but  in  general  it  may  be  said  that  early  sacrifice 
was  an  act  done  not  by  an  individual,  though  plenty 
of  individual  sacrifices  are  also  to  be  met  with,  but  by 
a  tribe,  in  which  all  the  partakers  of  the  blood  of  the 
tribe  took  part  before  the  god  who  was  their  common 
ancestor,  and  who,  as  it  were,  presided  over  and  shared 
in  their  feast.  In  some  cases  of  totem-clans  the  totem 
animal  is  sacrificed,  and  all  the  members  of  the  clan  eat 
their  animal  ancestor  (only  on  such  a  solemn  occasion 
could  the  totem  be  eaten),  and  so  renew  their  bond  of 
membership  and  brotherhood.  A  covenant  is  made  by 
sacrifice,  to  which  the  deity  and  all  the  members  of  his 
people  are  parties. 

To  these  primitive  conceptions  others  no  doubt  should 
be  added.  The  mood  was  not  always  the  same  which 
prevailed  when  the  tribe  renewed  its  union  with  its  god ; 
that  depended  on  circumstances.  In  general  the  sacrifice 
of  early  days  is  a  joyous  thing,  but  to  a  fierce  god  cruel 
rites  belonged.  When  cannibalism  was  practised  it  also 
was  such  a  primitive  sacrifice,  and  the  most  powerful 
means,  no  doubt,  of  cementing  the  union  of  the  god 
with  the  members  of  the  tribe.  When  the  god  was 
noted  for  suffering,  a  tragic  tone  prevailed,  and  the 
sacrifice  might  have  a  dramatic  character  and  represent 
the  leading  incident  in  the  history  of  the  god. 

If  we  trace  the  history  of  sacrifice  in  any  particular 
people  we  find  two  opposite  tendencies  at  work  in 
connection  with  it.  On  the  one  hand  there  is  a  disposi- 
tion to  smooth  matters,  to  drop  the  harsher  practices, 
to  let  an  animal  victim  suffice  where  a  man  used  to  be 
sacrificed,  to  let  the  man  off  with  some  slight  mutilation, 
such  as  circumcision  ;  or  to  allow  poor  people  to  offer 
a  less  costly  victim  than  the  former  custom  claimed 


CHAP.  V      Early  Developments — Practices  71 

— the  rite,  in  fact,  becomes  civilised,  and  adapts  itself 
to  the  feelings  of  a  humaner  period.  On  the  other 
hand  there  is  a  tendency  to  add  to  the  value  of  the 
offerings,  and  to  reckon  the  efficacy  of  sacrifice  by  its 
cost  and  painfulness.  In  periods  of  outward  distress 
sacrifice  attains  a  deeper  earnestness,  nothing  is  to  be 
left  undone,  and  no  cost  to  be  spared  to  bring  the 
deity  back  to  his  people ;  darker  customs  which  had 
become  obsolete  are  revived  again, ^  the  ceremonial  is 
made  more  elaborate,  new  kinds  of  sacrifice  are  intro- 
duced. The  old  social  aspect  of  sacrifice  grows  faint ;  it 
becomes  a  propitiation  or  a  trespass-offering  ;  the  notion 
is  entertained  that  sacrifice  is  the  more  efficacious  the 
more  it  has  cost,  or  the  more  magnificent  and  awful  its 
mode  of  presentation. 

Prayer  is  the  ordinary  concomitant  of  sacrifice  ;  the) 
worshipper  explains  the  reason  of  the  gift,  and  urges  ) 
the  deity  to  accept  it,  and  to  grant  the  help  that  is 
needed.  The  prayers  of  the  earliest  stage  are  offered 
on  emergencies,  and  often  appear  to  be  intended  to 
attract  the  attention  of  the  god  who  may  be  engaged 
in  another  direction.  The  requests  they  contain  are 
of  the  most  primary  sort.  Food  is  asked  for,  success 
in  hunting  or  fishing,  strength  of  arm,  rain,  a  good 
harvest,  children,  etc.  The  prayers  have  a  ring  of 
urgency  ;  they  state  the  claims  the  worshipper  has  on 
the  god,  and  mention  his  former  offerings  as  well  as 
the  present  one ;  they  praise  the  power  and  the  past 
acts  of  the  deity,  and  adjure  him  by  his  whole  relation- 
ship to  his  people  (and  also  to  their  enemies)  to  grant 
their  requests.  As  life  grows  more  secure,  the  note  of 
immediate  urgency  fades  out  of  prayer ;  being  a  feature 
not  of  an  occasional  worship  arising  from  some  press- 
ing need,  but  of  a  worship  statedly  offered  at  set  times, 
it  tends  to  run  into  forms,  and  to  become  fixed  and  to 
have  the  nature  of  a  liturgy.     Then  it  comes  about  that 

*  An  instance  of  human  sacrifice  has  iust  taken  place  in  a  remote  part  of 
Russia^. 


72  History  of  Relif^ion  part  i 

the  words  themselves  are  regarded  as  sacred,  and  that 
the  efficacy  of  the  sacrifice  is  supposed  to  be  partly 
dependent  on  them.  They  are  incantations  which  the 
deity  cannot  resist, — charms  which  in  themselves  have 
virtue  to  secure  the  desired  result. 

Sacred  Places,  Objects,  Persons. — The  early  world 
had  no  temples,  nor  idols,  nor  priests.  The  worship 
of  nature  does  not  suggest  the  enclosing  of  a  space 
for  religious  acts.  The  natural  object  itself  being  the 
sacred  thing,  worship  is  brought  to  it  where  it  stands  ; 
the  gift  is  carried  to  the  tree  or  to  the  well,  and  if  the 
deities  are  conceived  as  being  above  the  earth,  then  the 
tops  of  hills  are  the  spots  where  man  can  be  nearest  to 
them.  High  places  are  sacred  in  all  lands.  Groves 
and  remote  spots  are  also  sacred.  When  man  was 
carrying  on  his  struggle  with  the  wild  beasts  he  would 
regard  with  terror  the  places  where  they  had  their  lairs 
and  strongholds ;  it  was  in  this  form  that  the  feeling  of 
mystery  with  which  moderns  regard  places  where  they 
are  cut  off  from  all  human  intercourse,  first  appealed 
to  man.  After  this  earliest  stage  had  passed,  and  the 
grove  had  come  to  be  regarded  as  the  dwelling  of  a 
deity,  it  became  a  place  man  did  not  dare  to  approach 
except  with  the  necessary  precautions.  We  may  here 
explain  a  notion  which  plays  a  great  part  in  early 
religion,  but  is  not  specially  connected  with  any  one 
institution  of  it,  the  notion,  namely,  of  taboo.  Taboo 
is  a  Polynesian  term,  and  indicates  that  which  man 
must  not  use  or  touch,  because  it  belongs  to  a  deity. 
The  god's  land  must  not  be  trodden,  the  animal  dedi- 
cated to  the  god  must  not  be  eaten,  the  chief  who 
represents  the  god  must  not  be  lightly  treated  or 
spoken  of.  These  are  examples  of  taboo  where  the 
inviolable  object  or  person  belongs  to  a  good  god,  and 
where  the  taboo  corresponds  exactly  with  the  rule  of 
holiness.^     But  instances  are  still  more  numerous  among 

*  Jieligion  of  the  Semites,  by  W.  K.  Smith,  p.  142,  sqq. 


CHAP.  V      Early  Developments — Practices  "j-i^ 

savages  of  taboo  attaching  to  an  object  because  it  is 
connected    with    a    malignant   power.      The   savage  is 
surrounded  on  every  side  by  such  prohibitions;  there 
is  danger  at  every  step  that  he  may  touch  on  what  is 
forbidden  to  him,  and  draw  down  on  himself  unforeseen 
penalties.     The  nature  of  the  early  deities  also  excludes 
idolatry  in  connection  with  them  ;  there  is  no  need  for 
a  representation  of  a  being  who  is  visibly  present,  and 
can  be  extolled  and  worshipped  in  his  own  person.     It 
was  at  a  later  stage,  when  the  god  came  to  be  per- 
sonified and  separated  in  thought  from  his  natural  basis*, 
that  the  need  arose  to  make  representations  of  him  to 
aid  the  imagination.     The  stones  of  early  religion  are 
not  idols.     They  are  natural,  not  artificial  stones ;  they 
are  not  images  of  the  god,  but  the  god  himself,  or  at 
least  that  in  which  the  divine  spirit  dwells,^  or  with 
which  it  associates  itself  for  the  purpose  of  worship. 
And,  further,  the  earliest  time  knows  no  priests ;  there 
is  no  special  class  to,  whom  alone  the  celebration  of 
sacrifice  is  entrusted.     It  would  be  quite  inconsistent 
with  the  whole  view  of  sacrifice  which  then  prevailed, 
to  suppose  that  it  could  be  done  by  proxy.     It  was  a 
man's  own  act,  by  which  he  identified  himself  with  his 
god  and  with  his  tribe,  and  that  could  only  be  done 
by  a  personal  service.     We  often  find  kings  and  chiefs 
sacrificing.     Agamemnon  does  so,  Abraham  and  Saul 
do  so,  though  the  sacrifice  of  the  latter  is  disapproved 
of  by  the  priestly  writer.     David  does  so  without  being 
rebuked   for  it.     The   king   or   chief  does  this  as  the 
natural  head  of  his  clan  ;  some  one  must  take  the  lead- 
ing part  in  the  transaction.     As  religion  is  the  principal 
part  of  politics,  and  the  first  business  of  the  state  is  to 
keep  itself  right  with  the  gods,  the  head  of  the  state  is 
its  most  natural   representative   on   such  an  occasion. 
The  head  of  a  household  also  sacrifices  for  his  house, 
not  only  to  the  spirits  of  the  house,  but  in  cases  like 

^  Religion  of  the  Semites,  by  W.  R.  Smith,  p.  193, 


74  History  of  Religion  parti 

that  of  Job,  where  there  is  no  question  of  ancestor- 
worship.  Early  custorn  did  not  fix  in  any  uniform 
manner  by  whose  hands  a  sacrifice  was  to  be  made. 

Magfic — In  another  direction,  hov/ever,  we  see  in  the 
earHest  times  the  growth  of  a  class  of  persons  with 
religious  functions  and  attributes.  While  the  ordinary 
worship  of  the  gods  does  not  require  the  services  of 
any  special  class,  there  is  everywhere  found  the  man  of 
special  knowledge  and  gifts,  to  whom  men  resort  for 
needs  lying  outside  the  scope  of  that  worship.  Every 
savage  religion  contains  a  certain  amount  of  magic,  of 
practices,  that  is  to  say,  by  which  it  is  thought  possible 
to  influence  or  to  foretell  outward  events.  Early  man 
is  not  limited  in  his  views  of  what  may  happen  by  any 
accurate  knowledge  of  natural  laws,  or  of  the  sequence 
of  cause  and  effect,  and  he  imagines  it  possible  to 
influence  nature  in  various  ways.  He  imitates  what 
he  supposes  to  be  the  causes  of  things,  judging  that 
the  effect  will  also  follow  ;  or  he  uses  such  powers  as 
he  may  have  over  spirits,  to  induce  or  compel  them  to 
accomplish  his  wishes ;  or  he  manipulates  objects  he 
believes  to  have  a  hidden  virtue,  in  a  way  he  believes 
calculated  to  bring  about  the  desired  result.  Magic 
is  thus  related  both  to  the  cult  of  spirits  and  to  that 
of  casual  objects,  both  to  animism  and  to  fetishism. 
There  is  generally  a  special  person  in  a  tribe  who 
knows  these  things,  and  is  able  to  work  them.  It 
may  be  the  chief  or  king, — there  are  many  instances 
in  which  the  chief  is  believed  to  have  power  to  bring 
rain, — or  it  may  be  a  separate  functionary,  medicine- 
man, sorcerer,  diviner,  seer,  or  whatever  name  be 
given  him.  He  has  more  power  over  spirits  than  other 
men  have,  and  is  able  to  make  them  do  what  he  likes. 
He  can  heal  sickness,  he  can  foretell  the  future,  he 
can  change  a  thing  into  something  else,  or  a  man  into 
a  lower  animal  or  a  tree,  or  anything  ;  he  can  also 
assume  such  transformations  himself  at  will.  He  uses 
means  to  bring  about   such  results ;  he   knows  about 


CHAP.  V      Early  Developments— Practices  75 

herbs,  he  has  stones  or  other  objects  endowed  with 
special  virtues,  he  also  has  recourse  to  rubbing,  to 
making  images  of  affected  parts  of  the  body,  and  to 
various  other  arts.  Very  frequently  he  is  regarded  as 
inspired.  It  is  the  spirit  dwelling  in  him  which  brings 
about  the  wonderful  results  ;  without  the  spirit  he  could 
not  do  anything.  While  the  details  of  course  vary 
infinitely  in  different  tribes,  the  figure  of  the  worker 
of  magic  is  an  essential  feature  of  any  general  sketch 
of  early  religion.  He  is  often  a  person  of  great  political 
importance ;  being  supposed  to  be  in  closer  alliance 
than  any  one  else  with  spiritual  beings,  he  has  a  power 
which  is  much  dreaded,  and  which  even  the  chief  cannot 
disregard. 

Of  Sacred  Seasons  there  can  be  but  few  in  the 
earliest  human  Hfe,  when  there  is  no  fixed  measure 
of  time,  nor  any  notion  of  regularity,  but  all  depends 
on  the  occurrence  of  need  and  of  danger.  As  soon 
as  agriculture  was  engaged  in,  however,  attention  must 
have  been  fixed  on  the  recurrence  of  the  seasons,  and 
the  measures  of  time  afforded  by  the  moon  must,  at 
least,  have  been  observed.  The  summer  and  the  winter 
solstice,  the  equinoxes,  the  new  moons,  these  were  to 
the  early  cultivator  epochs  to  be  observed  ;  and  certain 
annual  feasts  are  found  to  have  come  into  use  in  very 
early  times,  epochs  of  man's  simplest  and  earliest 
calendar,  and  occasions  for  tribal  gatherings  and  for 
such  fixed  religious  observances  as  we  have  described. 
A  private  religious  emergency  arising  in  the  interval 
between  two  feasts  is  dealt  with  by  means  of  a  vow ; 
the  help  of  the  deity,  that  is  to  say,  is  claimed  at 
once,  but  the  payment  of  the  due  consideration  for  it 
on  man's  part  is  deferred  till  the  time  of  sacrifice  comes 
round.^ 

Character  of  Early  Religrion. — We  have  now  passed 
in  review  the  principal  observances  and  usages  of 
primitive  religion  ;   but  before  concluding  this  chapter 

*  Genesis  xxviii.  20  ;  Judges  xi.  30 ;  2  Sam.  xv.  8, 


76  History  of  Religion  part  1 

some  remarks  have  to  be  made  as  to  the  position 
religion  held  in  the  life  of  ancient  times,  and  as  to 
the  spirit  and  temper  which  it  exhibited.  In  the  first>, 
place,  as  we  remarked  above,  religion  was  in  these 
times  the  most  important  branch  of  the  public  service. 
Every  uncommon  occurrence  had  to  be  laid  before  the 
god,  and  no  important  step  could  be  taken  without 
consulting  him  ;  and  it  was  a  principal  duty  of  the 
head  of  the  state  to  keep  the  god  on  good  terms  with 
the  tribe,  and  to  apply  to  him  for  all  the  aid  and 
protection  the  tribe  required  from  him.  In  attending 
to  this,  however,  the  chief  was  acting  for  his  tribes- 
men ;  where  there  was  no  chief  these  matters  were  not 
neglected,  but  were  looked  after  by  common  spontaneous 
action  by  the  members  of  the  tribe.  The  god  was  their  "j 
lord,  their  father,  and  they  must  always  take  him  along  ' 
with  them.  This  identification  of  the  god  with  the 
interests  of  his  subjects  is  so  close  that  the  latter  are 
troubled  with  no  doubts  as  to  whether  or  not  their 
god  is  with  them.  If  they  observe  the  customary  rules 
for  cultivating  his  friendship,  he  must  be  with  them  ; 
they  never  imagine  that  he  can  be  estranged  from  them. 
It  is  the  habitual  attitude  of  parly  religion  to  take  it 
for  granted  that  the  god  goes  with  his  people  (he 
generally  has  no  other  people  to  go  with)  and  helps 
them  against  their  adversaries.  To  doubt  this  and 
to  resort  to  sacrifices  of,atonement  to  bring  him  back 
from  his  estrangement  is  a  later  stage  of  religion.  But 
if  religion  is  in  this  way  a  public  matter,  a  matter  of 
the  tribe  and  its  concerns,  what  place  is  there  in  it 
for  the  individual?  Individual  cares  and  needs  may 
form  the  subject  of  prayers  and  vows,  but  religion  on 
the  whole  has  to  do  with  the  tribe,  not  with  the 
individual,  or  with  the  individual  only  as  a  member 
of  the  tribe.  It  is  the  duty  of  every  one  to  take  his 
part  in  the  public  approaches  to  the  god ;  he  must 
either  do  so  or  be  cut  off  from  his  tribe.  For  his 
own  griefs  there  is  little  comfort  in  the  tribal  worship ; 


CHAP.  V      Early  Develop^nents — Practices  yj 

indeed,  personal  sorrows  and  perplexities  meet  with 
but  little  consideration  in  early  religion.  As  the  tribe 
is  in  no  doubt  of  the  goodwill  of  its  god,  and  regards 
him  as  a  firm  ally  not  easily  turned  away,  old  religion 
has  a  confident  and  joyous  air,  strongly  contrasting 
with  the  doubts  and  the  contrition  of  modern  faith. 
The  acts  of  worship  are  feasts  at  which  the  members 
of  the  tribe  rejoice  and  make  merry  before  their  god. 
To  the  delights  of  feasting  those  of  dance  and  song 
are  added  ("  The  people  sat  down  to  eat  and  drink, 
and  rose  up  to  play  "),  and  frequently  the  merrymaking 
goes  to  the  pitch  of  frenzy ;  the  worshippers  dance 
themselves  into  an  ecstasy  ;  they  feel  the  god  taking 
possession  of  them,  and  are  hurried  along  by  the  sacred 
inspiration  to  behaviour  they  would  not  dream  of  at 
any  other  time. 

Early  Relig"ion  and  Morality. — How  did  this  early 
religion  bear  upon  morality?  In  how  far  was  it  a 
power  for  righteousness?  There  are  two  sides  to  this 
question.  In  the  first  place,  the  religion  of  the  infant 
world  was  a  strong  influence  for  the  restraint  of 
individual  excess.  The  god  being  the  parent  of  the 
tribe,  its  customs  had  his  sanction,  he  had  no  higher 
interest  than  its  welfare,  he  was  identified  with  all  its 
enterprises,  its  battles  were  his  battles  also.  The 
worship  of  the  god  therefore  made  strongly  for  loyalty 
to  the  tribe,  and  for  the  observance  of  its  customs  ;  it 
caused  a  man  to  forget  his  own  interest  where  that  of 
the  tribe  was  concerned,  and  unhesitatingly  to  sacrifice 
himself  for  the  public  cause.  But,  on  the  other  hand, 
primitive  religion  was  an  intensely  conservative  force ; 
it  subjected  the  whole  life  to  the  customs  of  the  tribe, 
and  discouraged  spontaneity  and  independence  in  moral 
action.  The  duties  it  prescribed  were  of  a  conventional 
order ;  a  man  had  no  duties  to  those  beyond  his  tribe, 
and  to  his  fellow-tribesmen  religion  bade  him  rather 
walk  by  rule  than  consult  his  own  feelings.  Of  the 
morality  which  consists  in  discipline  and  subordination 


78  History  of  Religion  part  1 

to  the  community,  early  religion  was  an  efificient  school ; 
to  the  higher  morality,  the  law  of  which  is  found  written 
in  the  heart,  and  which  aims  at  rendering  higher  services 
than  those  of  custom,  it  did  not  attain.  The  worship  of 
the  higher  nature-powers,  the  heavenly  powers  of  light 
and  kindness,  tending  as  it  did  to  transcend  the  limits 
of  place  and  of  nationality,  was  destined  powerfully 
to  foster  a  more  generous  morality  than  that  of  the 
tribal  worship,  and  this  tendency  was  no  doubt  dimly 
felt  by  early  man  long  before  it  was  possible  for  him 
to  follow  it. 


CHAPTER  VI 

NATIONAL   RELIGION 

We  now  leave  behind  us  the  behefs  and  practices  of 
savage  and  barbarous  tribes,  and  turn  to  those  of  mighty 
,  empires.  The  gulf  which  lies  between  these  two  parts 
of  our  subject  is  obviously  a  wide  one  ;  and  in  many 
instances  there  is  no  bridge  by  which  the  student  can 
pass  from  one  to  the  other.  Often  it  is  a  matter  of 
inference  rather  than  of  direct  proof  that  the  great 
systems  are  built  out  of  the  materials  accumulated, 
as  we  have  seen,  in  the  prehistoric  period.  But  the 
inference  is  sufficiently  strong  to  rest  upon  ;  in  some 
cases  we  are  able  to  see  quite  clearly  how  the  religion 
of  the  empire  arose  by  an  uninterrupted  growth  out 
of  that  of  the  tribe  ;  and  in  the  cases  where  this  cannot 
be  so  fully  made  out,  we  yet  judge  that  the  result  came 
about  in  a  similar  way.  We  pause  therefore  at  this 
point  to  ask  what  is  the  nature  of  the  transition  at 
which  we  have  arrived,  or,  in  other  words,  what  con- 
stitutes the  difference  between  the  primitive  and  the 
later  religions  ?  The  difference  is  probably  not  one  of 
magnitude  only ;  it  consists  not  merely  in  the  fact  that 
the  religion  of  the  empire  is  that  of  a  much  larger 
number  of  people  than  that  of  the  tribe ;  there  is  a 
difference  in  character  as  well  as  in  dimensions.  With 
a  view  to  the  examination  of  this  point  it  will  be  found 
convenient  to  consider  some  of  the  proposed  classifica- 
tions of  religions,  as  most  of  these,  though  for  different 

79 


8o  History  of  Religion  part  i 

reasons,  place  the  religions  of  the  early  world  in  a 
different  category  from  those  known  to  us  historically. 
The  old-fashioned  Classification  of  Religions  was 
that  of  the  true  and  the  false.  This  our  principle  for- 
bids us  to  accept,  since  we  regard  the  various  faiths  of 
the  world  as  stages  in  the  development  of  religion,  and 
therefore  all  relatively  true. 

Another  division  which  has  done  good  service  is  that 
into  natural  and  revealed  religion.  By  natural  religion 
has  generally  been  understood  such  religion  as  human 
reason  could  attain  to  without  supernatural  aid.  But 
this  description  does  not  apply  to  any  religious  system 
that  ever  prevailed  largely  in  any  country  ;  the  actual 
religions  have  all  been  the  work  of  custom  and  age- 
long tradition,  not  of  the  deliberate  operation  of  reason. 
Natural  religion  therefore  is  a  term  which  is  of  no  use 
to  us  in  classification  ;  since  none  of  the  actual  religions 
which  we  have  to  study  answers  to  that  title.  Nor  is 
revealed  religion  a  term  we  can  conveniently  use  in 
such  a  work  as  this.  Many  religions  claim  to  be  the 
result  of  revelation,  but  few  make  it  at  the  outset  of 
their  career.  The  title  tells  us  nothing  about  the 
original  character  of  a  religion,  but  only  that  at  some 
period  in  its  career  the  claim  was  made  for  it  that  its 
origin  was  supernatural.  If  we  grouped  the  revealed 
religions  together  we  might  find  that  the  members  of 
the  group  had  no  similarity  to  each  other  beyond  the 
accidental  circumstance  that  the  claim  of  revelation 
had  been  made  for  them.  Besides,  science  cannot 
possibly  take  the  revealed  character  of  any  religion  for 
granted,  but  must  examine  each  such  faith  to  see  if  its 
growth  cannot  be  accounted  for  without  that  assumption. 
The  term  "  natural "  religion  has,  however,  other 
meanings  than  that  just  mentioned,  and  some  of  these 
we  may  find  to  be  of  more  service.  It  is  proposed  to 
s/  divide  religions  into  "  natural "  and  "  positive,"  or  into 
those  which  have  grown  up  and  those  which  have  been 
founded.     The  earlier   religions   were   not   due  to  the 


CHAP.  VI  National  Religion  8i 

personal  action  of  outstanding  individuals  (at  least  if 
they  were,  as  surely  they  must  have  been  in  part,  the 
individuals  and  their  struggles  are  unrecorded),  but 
were  the  work  of  unconscious  growth,  and  were  pro- 
duced by  forces,  which,  as  they  were  at  work  in  every 
part  of  the  early  world,  may  be  called  natural.  These 
religions  do  not  appeal  to  the  authority  of  any  founder, 
but  are  borne  forward  by  custom  and  tradition.  Some 
of  the  later  systems,  on  the  contrary,  bear  the  names 
of  their  founders,  and  are  said  to  have  been  introduced 
into  the  world  at  a  certain  time  and  place.  Their 
beginning  is  fixed,  and  they  have  a  body  of  beliefs 
and  practices  which  belong  to  their  original  constitu- 
tion, and  possess  authority  for  all  subsequent  genera- 
tions of  believers. 

This  classification  promises  well  at  first,  but  it  is 
difficult  to  apply  it ;  some  religions  pass  imperceptibly 
from  the  stage  of  custom  to  that  of  statute,  and  in  many 
religions  both  elements  are  so  largely  present  that  it  is 
difficult  to  strike  the  balance  between  them.  We  are 
led  to  the  conclusion  that  the  real  difference  between 
the  earlier  and  the  later  religions  is  a  more  vital  one 
than  any  of  these  classifications  would  indicate.  The 
authority  and  the  positive  character  of  the  later  systems 
is  a  symptom  of  the  change  which  has  produced  them, 
but  the  change  itself  lies  deeper.  The  higher  form  of 
religion  is  due  to  a  great  step  which  has  been  taken 
in  civilisation  ;  it  is  one  of  the  features  of  the  advance 
of  society  to  a  new  stage. 

Rise  of  National  Religion. — It  is  an  immense  step  in 
human  progress  when  a  set  of  barbarous  tribes  unite  to 
form  a  nation.  Under  the  strong  hand  of  some  chief 
or  under  the  pressure  of  some  great  necessity,  they  give 
up  the  isolation  which  is  both  the  weakness  and  the 
strength  of  the  tribal  state  of  society,  they  choose  some 
strong  place  for  their  centre,  they  submit  to  a  common 
government,  and  while  still  remembering  their  separate 
tribal  traditions  and  usages,  they  learn  to  act  as  members 

F 


82  History  of  Religion  part  i 

of  a  greater  community  than  the  tribe.  This  is  the 
beginning  of  civilisation  proper.  Law  takes  the  place 
of  custom  ;  the  state  undertakes  to  punish  crime,  and 
private  vengeance  is  discouraged  ;  the  state  also  under- 
takes the  protection  of  the  weak,  so  that  humane 
sentiment  appears,  and  a  security  is  engendered  in 
which  the  arts  and  sciences  can  spring  up  and  flourish. 

When  this  takes  place  a  new  type  of  religion  also 
makes  its  appearance.  While  each  of  the  tribes  may 
long  retain  its  own  gods,  and  its  peculiar  rites,  some  one 
god,  perhaps  the  god  of  the  strongest  tribe,  assumes  a 
higher  position  than  the  rest ;  his  worship  becomes  the 
central  religion  of  the  community,  round  which  the 
other  worships  arrange  themselves  by  degrees,  until 
there  comes  to  be  a  system  embracing  them  all,  but 
itself  possessing  a  new  character.  In  this  way  a 
national  religion  comes  into  existence.  The  details 
of  this  process  are  in  every  case  beyond  our  observa- 
tion. It  is  not  perhaps  for  centuries  after  the  national 
religion  has  come  into  operation,  that  reflection  is 
turned  towards  it ;  not  till  the  art  of  writing  has  come 
to  some  perfection  is  it  described  and  formulated  and 
made  statutory ;  and  by  that  time  all  accurate  memory 
of  its  beginnings  has  faded  away,  and  its  origin  is 
explained  instead  by  a  set  of  legends.  But  though  its 
beginnings,  like  all  beginnings,  are  obscure,  the  national 
religion  is  there.  It  has  its  history  ;  the  great  man 
who  brought  the  tribes  together,  or  who  first  devised 
for  them  a  higher  form  of  worship,  is  remembered  as 
its  founder ;  the  foundation  is  ascribed  to  the  inspira- 
tion of  the  chief  god  himself;  its  sacred  forms  are 
written  down  and  obtain  the  force  of  divine  laws,  the 
will  of  the  deity  is  a  thing  clearly  known  and  expressed 
in  positive  terms. 

It  is  not  asserted  that  this  description  will  apply  to 
the  origin  of  all  the  national  religions ;  the  character 
and  the  circumstances  of  one  nation  differ  from  those 
of  another,  and  it  need  not  be  supposed  that  they  all 


CHAP.  VI  National  Religion  83 

reached  their  state  worships  in  the  same  way.  Some 
religions  have  become  national  by  conquest  rather  than 
growth  ;  while  some  which  may  truly  be  called  national 
never  attained  to  any  national  organisation.  The  pro- 
cess we  have  described,  however,  may  be  regarded  as 
the  typical  one  for  the  rise  of  a  national  out  of  tribal 
religions,  and  indicates  to  us  what  we  may  regard  as 
the  real  and  substantial  difference  between  the  stage 
with  which  we  have  been  occupied  and  that  to  which 
we  are  now  to  turn.  All  other  differences  between  the 
prehistoric  and  the  historical  religions  may  be  traced 
to  this  one.  Before  the  religion  of  a  nation  has 
systematised  its  doctrine  and  its  ritual  so  as  to  merit 
the  name  of  positive,  before  it  has  provided  itself  with 
a  detailed  ritual  or  a  fixed  creed,  or  a  regular  priest- 
hood, or  a  set  of  sacred  books,  the  momentous  step 
has  already  been  taken,  the  new  form  of  religious  con- 
sciousness has  appeared.  Men  have  begun  to  believe 
not  only  in  the  tribal  but  in  the  national  god  or  gods, 
and  a  national  religion  has  come  into  existence. 

The  advance  from  tribal  to  national  worship  is  one 
of  the  most  momentous  in  the  whole  history  of  religion. 
The  nature  of  the  change  involved  in  it  may  be  summed 
up  as  follows. 

I.  Men  obtain  a  Greater  God  than  they  had  before. 
Formerly  a  man  believed  in  the  god  of  his  tribe,  one 
deity  among  many,  as  his  tribe  was  one  among  many, 
each  having  its  own  god  ;  but  now  he  comes  to  know 
a  god  who  is  higher  than  the  other  tribal  gods,  as  the 
king  whom  the  tribes  have  united  to  obey  is  greater 
than  the  tribal  chiefs.  The  god  stands  at  a  greater 
distance  than  before  from  the  worshipper ;  familiarity 
is  lessened,  and  religion  becomes  capable  of  a  deeper 
reverence  and  adoration.  Although  the  worship  of  the 
tribal  god  is  still  kept  up,  yet  if  the  new-born  national 
consciousness  is  strong,  the  national  form  of  religion 
rather  than  the  tribal  will  determine  the  religious  senti- 
ment of  the  individual. 


84  History  of  Religion  part  i 

2.  New  Social  Bond — The  nature  of  the  social  force 
exerted  by  religion  is  altogether  changed.  In  tribal 
religion  the  tie  of  the  worshippers  both  to  their  god 
and  to  each  other  is  that  of  blood  ;  the  god  is  their 
common  lineal  ancestor,  whose  blood  is  in  the  veins 
of  all  the  tribesmen.  The  social  bond  supplied  by  such 
a  religion  is  limited  to  the  members  of  the  tribe ;  a 
man's  fellow-tribesmen  are  his  brothers,  but  all  other 
men  are  his  enemies  ;  with  them  he  is  at  war  as  his 
god  is.  Social  duty  is  a  matter  of  blood  relationship, 
and  extends  only  to  the  kindred.  When  a  national 
religion  is  arrived  at,  a  social  obligation  of  a  new  kind 
will  evidently  make  its  appearance.  The  national  god 
is  related  by  blood  to  only  one  of  the  tribes  composing 
the  nation  ;  the  bond  between  hira  and  the  other  tribes 
must  be  of  another  nature.  He  has  conquered  their 
gods  or  they  have  voluntarily  accepted  him  as  their 
chief  god ;  in  any  case  it  is  not  the  tie  of  blood 
that  binds  them  to  him,  but  some  more  ideal  tie,  like 
that  between  a  king  and  his  subjects,  or  between  a 
patron  and  his  clients.  And  they  now  have  a  religious 
connection  also  with  men  who  are  not  their  kindred. 
The  national  worship  is  inconsistent  with  the  gross 
materialism  of  the  system  of  kinship,  and  places  instead 
of  it  the  belief  in  a  god  further  above  the  world,  and 
therefore  more  spiritual,  and  obligations  to  men  which, 
as  they  are  not  derived  from  a  common  blood,  are 
somewhat  more  purely  moral. 

3.  A  Better  God. — The  new  god  of  the  nation  as  he 
is  higher  above  the  world  is  a  being  of  higher  and 
better  character.  He  belongs  to  all  the  tribes,  and  is 
not  the  mere  partisan  of  any ;  like  the  king,  he  is 
above  tribal  jealousies,  and  is  interested  in  checking 
the  violence  of  all,  and  securing  justice  to  all.  He 
may  be  appealed  to  by  those  who  have  suffered 
violence  and  who  have  no  earthly  helper ;  and  thus 
he  tends  to  become  an  ideal  of  justice  and  fatherly 
kindness,  and  to  reflect  in  the  world  above  the  senti- 


CHAP.  VT  National  Religion  S5 

ments  springing  up  in  the  world  below,  in  favour  of 
the  repression  of  violence  and  the  administration  of 
even-handed  justice. 

In  these  directions  the  religion  of  the  nation  tends  to 
rise  above  that  of  the  tribe.  The  tribal  worships  may 
continue  almost  as  they  were,  the  tribal  gods  may  still 
be  worshipped,  the  tribal  jealousies  and  conflicts  still  be 
carried  on  in  spite  of  the  new  union,  and  all  the  super- 
stitions of  early  religion  may  long  survive ;  yet  a  new 
religious  force  has  appeared  which  will  in  time  produce 
a  complete  new  system.  The  true  principle  of  classi- 
fication, therefore,  must  be  drawn  from  the  difference 
between  tribal  and  national  religion,  as  this  is  the  most 
vital  difference,  and  that  from  which  all  the  others 
which  we  mentioned  may  be  derived. 

The  transition  thus  sketched  took  place  at  widely 
different  periods  in  different  parts  of  the  world ;  it 
began  early  and  has  taken  place  even  in  modern  times, 
W'hile  very  many  tribes  in  various  parts  of  the  globe 
have  not  yet  arrived  at  it.  It  is  a  transition  of  which 
it  is  manifestly  impossible  to  exhibit  the  detail ;  in 
most  cases  the  detail  is  not  known,  and  it  were  a 
profitless  task  to  trace  how  primitive  religions  met, 
united  or  remained  apart,  and  how  their  crossings  in 
one  case  led  to  a  national  religion,  and  in  many  others 
led  to  no  such  result.  Much,  no  doubt,  is  to  be  found 
on  such  points  in  special  works,  and  much  still  remains 
to  be  discovered.  Various  instances  of  the  formation 
of  national  religions  will  meet  us  in  our  subsequent 
chapters. 

The  Inca  Religfion. — We  give,  however,  at  this  point 
an  example  of  the  transition  we  have  described,  drawn 
from  a  quarter  remote  from  the  great  movements  of 
history,  and  in  which  the  facts  are  plain  and  uncon- 
tested. Of  the  two  great  civilised  communities  of  the 
New  World,  discovered  by  the  Spaniards  in  the  six- 
teenth century,  Mexico  presents  a  worship  compounded 
of  many  elements,  which,  along  with  high  and  lofty 


86  History  of  Religion  part  i 

morality  and  great  magnificence  of  ritual,  yet  retains 
an  extraordinary  amount  of  cruelty  and  savage  horror. 
In  Peru,  however,  we  find  a  state  religion  which  super- 
seded savage  cults  still  remembered  in  the  country,  and 
from  the  Royal  Commentaries  of  the  hicas,  written  by 
the  Inca  Garcilaso  de  la  Vega  in  the  beginning  of 
the  seventeenth  century,'  we  are  able  to  describe 
the  religion  of  Peru  both  before  and  after  the  Inca 
reformation. 

"Before  the  Incas,"  this  writer  tells  us,  "each  province, 
each  nation,  and  each  house  had  its  own  gods,  different 
from  one  another,  for  they  thought  that  a  stranger's  god 
could  not  attend  to  them  but  only  their  own."     They 
worshipped  all  manner  of  deities;  of  these  are  mentioned 
herbs,  plants,  flowers,  all  kinds  of  trees,  high  hills,  great 
rocks,  and  the  chinks  in  them;  caves,  pebbles,  emeralds. 
They  also  worshipped  animals ;  the  tiger,  the  lion,  and 
the  bear  for  their  fierceness,  and  the  monkey  for  his 
cunning;  these  they  did  not  kill,  but  went  down  on  the 
ground  to  worship  them  and  would  even  suffer  them- 
selves  to  be   devoured   by  them,  since   they  regarded 
these  animals  as  their  own   ancestors.      All   kinds  of 
animals  they  treated    in  this  way ;  there  was  not  an 
animal,  how  filthy  and  vile  soever,  so  the  quaint  words 
tell  us,  they  did  not  look  on  as  a  god.     Other  Indians, 
again,  worshipped    things    from    which    they   derived 
benefit,   such    as    great    fountains    and    rivers ;    some 
worshipped  the   earth,  and   called  it   mother,  because 
it  yielded  their  fruits ;  some  the  sea,  calling  it  Mama- 
cocha ;  and  a  great  number  of  other  objects  of  adora- 
tion   are    mentioned.       They   sacrificed   animals    and 
maize,  but  also  men  and  women,  and  these  not  only 
captives   taken    in    war   but   also   their    own    children, 
smearing  the  idol  with  the  blood.     (In  other  quarters 
of  the  globe  this  is  a  symbolic  act  showing  that  the 
idol  and  the  worshippers  all  partake  in  the  same  life.) 
Some   tribes    were   fiercer   than   others,  and   practised 
*  Printed  by  the  Hakluyt  Society. 


CHAP.  VI  National  Religion  87 

cannibalism  more  extensively.  They  were  also  well 
provided  with  sorcerers  and  witches. 

All  this  the  Incas  altered.  They  were  a  princely 
family,  regarding  whose  origin  and  accession  to  power 
various  legends  are  told  ;  the  god  they  worshipped  was 
the  sun,  and  they  considered  and  called  themselves  the 
children  of  the  sun.  Their  father  the  sun,  they  said, 
had  sent  their  forefathers  to  teach  the  tribes  various 
things  they  very  much  needed  to  learn  ;  to  cultivate 
the  fields,  to  breed  flocks,  to  live  in  peace,  to  respect 
the  wives  and  daughters  of  others,  and  to  have  no  more 
than  one  wife.  The  Incas  knew  better,  it  was  said, 
than  the  rest  how  to  choose  a  god,  and  they  declared  that 
men  should  worship  the  sun,  who  gave  light  and  heat 
and  made  things  grow ;  they  should  be  grateful  for 
his  benefits,  and  he  would  reward  them  if  they  were 
obedient.  The  Indians  accordingly  took  the  sun  for 
their  god  "  without  father  or  brothers  "  ;  they  considered 
the  moon  to  be  his  sister  and  wife,  but  did  not  worship 
her.  Besides  this,  we  hear  the  Incas  sought  a  supreme 
god,  and  called  him  "  Pachacamac,"  that  is  "  soul  of  the 
world."  This  being  gave  lil'e  to  the  world  and  supported 
it,  but  they  did  not  build  temples  to  him  or  offer  him 
any  sacrifice ;  they  worshipped  him  in  their  hearts  as 
an  unknown  god. 

The  practice  of  the  Inca  religion  as  described  to  us 
by  several  Spanish  writers  falls  a  good  deal  short  of 
this  doctrine.  Many  beings  were  worshipped  besides 
the  sun  ;  a  number  of  prayers  were  addressed  to  the 
Creator  and  the  sun  and  thunder.  Many  sacred  objects 
also  were  adored,  such  as  embalmed  bodies  of  ancestors 
and  various  idols.  They  practised  all  kinds  of  magic, 
and,  worst  of  all,  many  boys  and  girls  were  offered  in 
sacrifice,  even  before  the  Incas  and  on  great  public 
occasions.  The  reformation  of  the  Incas  is  evidently 
not  complete ;  if  it  had  not  been  arrested  by  the 
arrival  of  the  Spaniards  it  may  be  that  the  purifying 
agency  of  the  new   religion   would   have   found   much 


88  History  of  Religion  part  i 

still  to  do.  Enough,  however,  is  seen  to  afford  strong 
confirmation  of  the  principle  that  religion  gains  infinitely 
in  elevation  when  a  national  worship  appears.  The 
Incas  were  no  doubt  the.  heads  of  a  tribe  which  had 
conquered  others,  and  imposed  its  religion  on  them. 
The  lesser  conquered  worships  do  not  die  out  at  once, 
but  continue  along  with  the  central  one.  But  the 
latter  expresses  the  national  spirit  and  aspirations ; 
and,  as  settled  life  fosters  the  growth  of  intelligence 
and  of  public  spirit,  the  central  worship  must  more 
and  more  supersede  the  others,  while  itself  casting  off 
its  superstitious  and  backward  elements  and  becoming 
reasonable  and  elevating. 

It  will  be  convenient  to  indicate  at  this  stage  the 
further  line  of  study  to  be  followed  in  this  volume. 
As  it  is  our  aim  to  trace,  however  inadequately,  the 
growth  of  the  religion  of  the  world  as  a  whole,  it  is 
necessary  that  we  should  confine  ourselves  to  those 
parts  of  religious  history  which  lie  in  the  line  of  that 
growth,  or  which  serve  in  a  conspicuous  manner  to 
illustrate  the  principles  according  to  which  it  has  taken 
place.  It  is  by  no  means  our  purpose  to  give  an 
account  of  all  the  religions  of  the  world,  nor  do  we 
seek  to  form  a  complete  magazine  of  the  curious 
phenomena  with  which  this  vast  field  of  study  is  in 
every  part  so  well  supplied.  If  we  have  interposed 
the  foregoing  brief  account  of  the  religion  of  the  Incas, 
it  is  not  because  of  its  own  intrinsic  importance,  but 
because  it  supplies  within  so  brief  a  compass  such  an 
apt  example  of  that  process  which  occurs  so  often  in 
the  growth  of  religion,  by  which  the  unorganised  rites 
of  a  multitude  of  clans  and  families  give  way  when 
the  nation  comes  into  being,  to  the  higher  and  better 
religion  of  the  state.  In  the  same  way  the  great 
religions  of  which  we  must  next  speak  have,  no  doubt, 
only  a  loose  connection  with  the  central  line  of  the 
world's  religious  progress.  No  work  professing  to  deal 
ever  so  cursorily  with  our  subject  could  omit  to  deal 


CHAP.  VI  National  Re ligio7i  89 

with  the  religion  of  China  nor  with  that  of  Egypt ; 
yet  neither  of  these  faiths  perhaps  has  permanently 
enriched  the  religious  consciousness  of  mankind.  The 
religion  of  Babylonia,  with  which  each  of  these  is 
connected,  was  also  of  isolated  and  independent  growth, 
and  is  far  away  from  us  both  in  time  and  in  historical 
connection.  Like  great  and  solitary  mountains  of 
ancient  formation,  each  on  a  continent  distant  from 
ours,  these  faiths  attract  us  not  because  we  depend  on 
them,  but  because  they  are  interesting  in  themselves. 
It  was  out  of  the  same  jungle  of  primitive  beliefs 
and  rites,  out  of  which  our  own  religion  has  at  length 
grown,  that  each  of  these  lifted  its  head  to  such  heights 
as  it  attained. 

After  disposing  of  these  great  systems  we  come  to 
the  developments,  much  later  in  point  of  time,  which 
have  led  to  the  highest  religion  yet  attained.  And 
here  two  great  races  or  groups  of  peoples  have  to  be 
considered,  each  in  its  own  way  singularly  gifted  and 
each  contributing  in  a  distinctive  manner  to  the  growth 
of  religion.  These  are  the  Semitic  and  the  Indo- 
European  families.  Under  each  of  these  heads  we 
find  several  well-marked  religions  ;  and  the  nature  of  the 
case  itself  points  out  our  further  procedure.  Taking  up 
first  the  Semitic  group,  —  including  Islam, — since  this 
part  of  the  subject  lies  at  a  greater  distance  from  our- 
selves, we  shall  inquire  whether  there  is  any  common 
element  in  the  various  religions  it  comprises,  or,  in  other 
words,  if  there  is  a  Semitic  religion  which  may  be 
regarded  as  the  origin  from  which  the  Semitic  religions 
alike  sprang,  and  which  gave  them  a  common  character  ; 
and  we  shall  then  proceed  to  discuss  the  Semitic 
religions  each  by  itself  We  shall  then  discuss  the 
common  belief  of  the  Aryans,  and  go  on  to  the  religions 
of  the  more  important  Aryan  nations.  Our  last  chapters 
will  deal  with  Christianity  and  will  point  out  the  nature  of 
development  which  our  study  as  a  whole  may  have  taught 
us  to  recognise  in  the  religion  of  mankind. 


90  History  of  Religion  part  i 


Books  Recommended 


On  the  classification  of  Religions  see  Tiele's  article  on  "  Religion  "  in 
the  Encyclop(Bdia  Britannica,  Ninth  Edition. 

Alb.  Reville,  Lectures  on  the  Origin  and  Growth  of  Religion  as  illustrated 
by  the  Native  Religions  of  Mexico  and  Peru.     Hibbert  Lectures,  1884. 

De  la  Saussaye,  Third  Edition,  pp.  5-16,  gives  a  good  conspectus  of  the 
various  classifications  which  have  been  proposed. 


PART   II 
ISOLATED  NATIONAL  RELIGIONS 


CHAPTER  VII 

BABYLON    AND    ASSYRIA 

The  religion  of  Babylonia,  of  which  that  of  Assyria  is 
a  late  form,  as  the  Assyrians  appropriated  all  they 
could  of  the  religion  and  the  literature  of  this  southern 
empire  which  they  conquered,  cannot  be  classed  along 
with  any  other  without  some  inconvenience.  In  point 
of  remoteness  in  time  it  takes  precedence  even  of  the 
religions  of  China  and  of  Egypt ;  like  these  great  faiths 
it  also  is,  in  its  earlier  stage,  a  growth  by  itself  in  a  land 
and  people  of  its  own,  where  apparently  it  grew  up 
independently  from  rude  beginnings.  It  is  undoubtedly 
one  of  the  Semitic  religions ;  but  it  had  a  character 
of  its  own  which  other  Semitic  religions  did  not  share, 
and  of  the  simple  and  early  Semitic  religious  attitude 
which  will  be  set  forth  in  another  chapter  it  retained 
but  little.  It  had  an  immense  influence.  Its  ideas 
entered  the  religion  of  the  Old  Testament  by  several 
roads.  Abram  came  to  Canaan  through  Haran  from 
Ur  of  the  Chaldees ;  and  in  Canaan  the  religious  ideas, 
myths,  and  legends  of  Babylon  must  have  been  well 
known.  The  discovery  of  this  code  of  Hammurabi  has 
shown  that  many  of  the  laws  of  Moses  were  laws  of 
Babylonia  long  before  Moses.  In  a  later  period  the 
tread  of  Babylonian  soldiery  was  heard  in  Palestine 
many  a  time  before  the  great  captivity,  in  which  Israel 
sat  down  and  wept  remembering  Zion  by  the  waters  of 
Babylon.  In  Greece  also  we  find  that  ideas  which 
came   from    Babylon   had    become   known,  by  way  of 

93 


94  History  of  Religion  part  ii 

Phenicia,  at  a  very  early  period.  Recent  discoveries, 
however,  seems  to  make  it  impossible  to  assign  to  the 
religion  of  Mesopotamia  any  other  place  than  the  first 
among  the  great  faiths  of  the  world.  The  ancient 
connection  between  Mesopotamia  and  Egypt,  surmised 
till  now  rather  than  known,  is  coming  to  light,  and  it 
appears,  at  least,  possible  that  the  first  of  these  countries 
may  have  to  be  regarded  as  the  source  of  all  the 
civilisations  of  antiquity.  The  pantheon  of  Egypt  has 
striking  similarities  to  that  of  Babylonia,  and  some  of 
the  Egyptian  temples  show  traces  of  derivation  from 
the  lands  of  the  Tigris  and  Euphrates,  The  similarities 
in  the  case  of  China  are  not  so  marked,  but  they  are 
substantial.  In  Babylonia,  therefore,  we  may  be  deal- 
ing not  with  one  of  three  isolated  religions,  but  with 
the  mother  of  the  other  two.  If,  as  Mr.  Lockyer  holds,^ 
Egypt  borrowed  astronomy  from  Babylon  in  connection 
with  temple-building,  more  than  5000  years  B.C.,  the 
religion  of  Babylon  must  indeed  be  carried  far  into  the 
past. 

People  and  Literature.— Certain  parts  of  Babylonian 
religion  are  much  ruder  and  more  superstitious  than  the 
exalted  star-worship  which  is  its  central  feature,  and 
these  have  been  ascribed  to  peoples  who  dwelt  in 
Babylonia  before  the  supposed  Semitic  conquest,  viz. 
the  Accadians  in  the  north  and  the  Sumerians  to  the 
south,  peoples  not  related  to  the  Semites  in  blood  or 
in  language,  but  generally  called  Turanian,  and  thought 
to  be  perhaps  akin  to  the  Chinese.  The  cuneiform 
writing  which  remained  in  use  for  millenniums  after  the 
Semitic  immigration  as  the  sacred  literary  form,  was 
supposed  to  have  been  the  invention  of  these  peoples, 
who  had  also  made  some  progress  in  plastic  art. 

There  is,  however,  no  direct  evidence  of  the  alleged 
early  Semitic  invasion,  and  the  Sumerian  hypothesis 
of  which  it  is  a  feature  is  now  regarded  by  some  with 
less  confidence.     It  is  based  on  linguistic  phenomena. 

^  Dawn  of  Astronomy,  1 894, 


CHAP.  VII  Babylofi  afid  Assyria  95 

Hammurabi,  2250  B.C.,  reigned  over  a  realm  whose 
subjects  were  of  different  tongues,  and  entrusted  his 
records  to  two  methods  of  writing.  The  old  Sumerian 
language,  which  cannot,  in  the  opinion  of  the  best 
scholars,  be  shown  to  have  affinity  with  any  language  of 
the  ancient  world,  came  to  be  confined  to  matters  of 
religion  and  magic,  and  was  superseded  by  the  Assyro- 
Babylonian,  which  was  Semitic.  But  the  feeble  ray  of 
the  Sumerian  hypothesis  can  be  dispensed  with  in  the 
light  which  is  shining  on  ancient  Babylonia  from  other 
quarters.  For  its  information  about  that  ancient  land 
the  world  was  formerly  dependent  on  the  scanty  notices 
of  Greek  and  Latin  writers,  but  within  the  last  half- 
century  astonishing  new  sources  of  information  have 
been  opened  up.  Explorations  carried  on  by  scholars 
of  many  lands  have  made  us  acquainted  with  Babylonian 
and  Assyrian  temples  and  palaces,  and  with  many  a  great 
royal  inscription.  Great  libraries,  made  of  brick  tablets, 
have  been  discovered  buried  under  the  ruins  of  the 
cities,  and  the  gradual  decipherment  and  arrangement 
of  this  old  literature  is  proceeding  as  fast  as  able  and 
devoted  workers  can  overtake  it.  Those  who  know 
the  subject  best  declare  that  no  complete  history  of 
Babylonian  religion  can  yet  be  written.  The  texts  now 
in  our  possession  embody  many  documents  of  much 
more  remote  age,  yet  the  information  is  as  yet  too 
fragmentary  and  often  of  too  doubtful  interpretation, 
while  the  proportion  it  bears  to  the  whole  of  Babylonian 
life  is  too  little  known  to  supply  a  solid  foundation  for 
history.  With  this  caution  we  proceed  to  state  the 
results  which  are  considered  likely  to  prove  well  founded. 
As  we  saw,  several  features  remain  in  the  religion  in 
later  times  which  appear  to  throw  light  back  upon  its 
early  condition,  and  it  may  be  best  to  begin  with  these 
before  describing  the  noble  structure  presented  on  the 
whole  by  this  religion. 

I.  Worship  of  Spirits.  —  The    Babylonians,  like  the 
Chinese,  believed  the  world  to  be  thickly  peopled  with 


96  History  of  Re/igion  part  ii 

spirits   of  all    kinds ;   and   saw  in    each   movement   in 
nature    the    action    of  a  "  zi "   or   spirit.     These    spirits 
could    be   to    some    extent    controlled  ;    though    their 
character    was    not    known,   yet    certain    charms   and 
incantations  were  believed  to  have  power  over  them, 
and  communication  with  the  unseen  world  took,  there- 
fore, the  form  of  magic.     The  earliest  portions  of  the 
sacred   literature  consist  of  spells  or   charms  believed 
to  possess  this  virtue,  and  these  were  never  displaced 
from  the  collection  ;  on   the  contrary,  new  spells  were 
written  even  after  higher  spiritual  beings  were  known 
and   more  ethical  forms  of  addressing  them   had  been 
devised.     Especially  were  all  pains  and  diseases  ascribed 
to  the  agency  of  spirits  or  of  sorcerers  and  witches,  their 
human  allies,  and  the  sick  person-  naturally  sent  for  an 
exorcist  to  expel  the  spirit  which  was  tormenting  him. 
Some  spirits  were  more  powerful  than  others,  and  the 
stronger  spirit  was  invoked  to  rebuke  and  drive  out  the 
weaker.     The  spirit  of  heaven  and  the  spirit  of  earth 
were  adjured  to  conjure  the  plague-demon,  the  demon 
who  was  afflicting  the  eye,  the  heart,  the  head,  or  any 
other  part  of  the  body.     Assertions  are  not  wanting  in 
the  cuneiform  literature  that  beliefs  and  practices  of  this 
kind  formed  no  part  of  the  true  religion  of  Babylonia, 
and  some   scholars  regard   it   as   a   late   degeneration. 
The  analogy  of  similar  cases  points,  however,  to  the 
conclusion   that  magic  is  everywhere  an  early  form  of 
religion  which  is  only  overshadowed,  not  killed,  when  a 
great  religion  arises,  and  which  tends  to  reappear.     It 
may  be  said  that  there  is  no  evidence  of  any  break  in 
Babylonian  religion  ;  if  the  Sumerians  yielded  to  the 
Semites,  this  led  to  no  religious  revolution  ;  the  religion 
is  Semitic  from  first  to  last. 

2.  Animals. — A  step  above  this  trafficking  with  spirits 
is  the  worship  of  animals,  which  Mr.  Sayce  considers  to 
have  been  an  early  form  of  Babylonian  religion,  and  to 
afford  an  explanation  of  various  features  in  it.  Like  the 
gods  of  Egypt  and  those  of  Greece,  many  of  the  gods  of 


CHAP.  VII  Babylon  and  Assyria  97 

Babylon  have  animal  emblems ;  this  appears  both  in 
the  representations  of  them  and  in  their  legends.  The 
winged  bulls  and  eagle-headed  men  of  Babylonian  art 
represent  the  same  rise  of  the  gods  which  we  know  to 
have  taken  place  in  Egypt,  from  the  animal  to  the 
semi-human,  and  then  to  the  fully  human  form.  An 
intermediate  stage  in  Babylonia  is  that  the  god  stands 
on  the  back  of  the  animal  with  which  presumably  he 
was  formerly  identified.  We  have  an  Assyrian  Dagon 
whose  head  and  shoulders  are  covered  with  a  fish's  skin  ; 
we  have  gods  and  goddesses  who  are  human  figures 
with  the  exception  of  their  wings ;  we  have  winged 
dragons  ;  we  have  the  great  bulls  with  human  head  and 
wings  which  stood  as  guardian  deities  to  ward  off  evil 
spirits  at  the  portal  of  a  palace.  The  following  animals 
were  also  connected  with  gods  :  the  antelope,  the  serpent, 
which  came  to  be  the  embodiment  of  cunning  and 
wickedness,  the  goat,  the  pig,  the  vulture.  We  thus  see 
that  the  rise  from  zoomorphism  to  anthropomorphism 
which  the  Greeks  afterwards  carried  to  the  highest  point 
attainable  by  the  resources  of  art,  began  in  Babylonia. 

Like  all  early  religions,  that  of  Babylonia  is  broken 
up  into  a  multiplicity  of  local  worships.  There  is  no 
common  system,  but  each  place  has  its  own  god  or 
gods  and  its  own  sacred  rites.  In  Egypt  we  shall  find 
reason  to  believe  that  this  state  of  matters  had  its  origin 
in  an  early  totemistic  arrangement  of  society ;  whether 
the  same  was  the  case  in  Babylonia  or  not,  it  is  vain 
to  speculate.  Babylonian  religion  as  we  see  it  has 
risen  far  above  the  direct  worship  of  animals.  Each 
god  comes  before  us  in  a  certain  local  connection  and 
with  a  special  character,  but  they  tend  to  grow  like 
each  other,  and  their  worship  is  organised  on  the  same 
plan.  The  gods  of  Babylonia  undoubtedly  belonged  to 
different  towns,  and  though  attempts  were  made  in 
later  times  to  bring  them  all  together  in  an  imperial 
Babylonian  religion,  and  to  settle  their  relations  to 
each   other,   these  attempts   led   to   no   system   which 

G 


9  8  History  of  Religion  part  ii 

was  finally  accepted.  The  number  of  the  recognised 
great  gods  varied,  and  there  was  always  a  large  number 
of  minor  gods.  Each  god  has  his  own  early  history ; 
here  as  everywhere  it  is  the  case  that  the  individual 
gods  are  earlier  than  the  system  which  seeks  to  connect 
them  together. 

The  Great  Gods.  —  The  great  gods  of  Babylonia 
belong  to  the  elements  and  to  the  heavenly  bodies. 
When  we  first  see  them,  they  are  not,  like  the  gods  of 
the  western  Semites,  lords  and  masters,  characters  taken 
from  human  families ;  they  are  not  husbands  and 
fathers  but  creators  and  universal  powers.  Another 
mark  about  them  is  that  they  have  originally  no  wives. 
When  they  come  to  have  wives,  these  are  simply 
doubles  of  themselves  with  no  special  character.  A 
consort  is  given  to  the  god  by  adding  a  feminine  ter- 
mination to  his  name,  thus  Bel  receives  Belit,  Anu 
has  Anat.  Finally  Babylonian  religion  is  more  and 
more  directed  to  the  heavenly  bodies.  It  is  Astral 
religion  carried  to  its  furthest  point.  This  fixed  the 
arrangement  of  its  temples,  the  occupations  of  its 
priests. 

We  rapidly  pass  in  review  the  principal  Gods.  One 
of  the  oldest  is  Ea  of  Eridu,  a  town  which  stood  in  old 
times  at  the  head  of  the  Persian  Gulf.  He  is  a  god  of 
the  deep,  whether  it  was  that  he  was  considered  to 
have  come  over  the  water  from  another  land,  or  whether 
he  is  connected  with  the  belief  which  was  held  in 
Babylonia  as  elsewhere,  that  all  things  originally  arose 
out  of  the  abyss.  In  later  forms  of  the  legend  his  name 
appears  as  Cannes,  and  he  is  an  amphibious  being,  half- 
fish,  half- man,  who  rises  from  the  deep  and  instructs 
men  in  arts  and  sciences.  Works  were  preserved  bear- 
ing his  name,  for  he  was  an  author.  He  continues,  even 
when  little  direct  worship  is  addressed  to  him,  one  of  the 
greatest  of  the  gods.  Ana  the  sky,  is  the  god  of  Erech 
on  the  lower  Euphrates.  Like  the  Chinese,  the  men 
of  Erech  regarded  the  sky  itself  as  the  highest  god. 


CHAP.  VII  Babylon  and  Assyria  99 

and  the  maker  and  ruler  of  all  things.  In  Babylonia, 
however,  the  notion  became  spiritualised  more  than 
in  China ;  at  first  we  hear  that  his  dwelling  became 
the  refuge  of  the  gods  during  the  Deluge,  but  in  later 
times  he  is  regarded  as  a  being  quite  above  heaven 
and  all  created  beings,  and  even  all  the  gods.  A  third 
great  god  is  Bel  of  Nippur,  not  the  later  Bel  of  Babylon, 
but  an  older  one,  identical  with  the  Accadian  Mul- 
lilla,  the  lord  of  the  under-world.  The  earliest  gods 
of  this  religion  are  those  of  the  sea,  the  earth,  and 
the  sky.  As  they  belong  to  different  districts  of  the 
country,  they  can  scarcely  be  called  a  trinity.  A  better 
approach  to  a  trinity  is  formed  by  Ea  of  Eridu,  Davkina 
his  wife  who  is  the  earth,  and  the  sun-god  Dumuzi, 
their  offspring.  The  son  of  Ea,  also  named  Miri-Dugga 
or  Merodach  (Marduk),  is  identified  with  the  Egyptian 
Osiris  ;  they  have  the  same  symbol,  each  is  a  sun-god, 
and  each  has  a  sister  who  is  also  his  wife,  Merodach 
has  Istar,  and  Osiris,  Isis.  In  Sergul  the  principal 
deity  was  the  fire  -  god,  sometimes  called  Savul ;  in 
Cutha  they  worshipped  Nerg'al  the  god  of  death,  the 
"  strong  one  "  who  had  his  throne  beneath.  Cutha  was 
a  favourite  place  of  sepulture  with  the  Babylonians. 
Rimmon  was  a  god  of  wind,  Matu  of  storms.  There 
is  a  dragon  Tiamat,  with  whom  the  great  gods  have 
to  contend. 

The  sun  and  the  moon  were  worshipped  everywhere ; 
each  city  had  its  own  sun-god  and  its  own  moon-god. 
The  preference  generally  shown  by  nomads  for  the 
moon,  since  their  journeys  are  made  by  night,  is  kept 
up  in  early  Babylonia,  where  the  moon-god  is  regarded 
as  the  father  of  the  sun-god,  and  as  the  greater  being. 
In  Ur  of  the  Chaldees  the  moon  was  the  principal 
deity.  There  were  also  towns  such  as  Larsa  and 
Sippara,  where  the  sun  was  the  chief  god  ;  and  many 
of  the  great  gods  of  later  times  were  originally  sun- 
gods.  The  Chaldeans,  moreover,  were  proverbially 
star  -  watchers,    and   a   **  zigurrath "    or   observatory,   a 


loo  History  of  Religion  part  ii 

building  of  seven   spheres   corresponding   to   those   of 
the   planets   as   they   pass   through    the    signs   of  the 
zodiac,  and  like  them  rising  up  to  the  seat  of  God  at 
the^  North  Star,  was  a  regular  part  of  the  later  Baby- 
lonian temple.     To  Babylonia  is  due  the   practice  of 
the  orientation  of  temples  ;  that  is  to  say,  the  arrange- 
ment of  the  building  in  such  a  way  that  its  principal 
axis  shall  point  exactly  in  a  desired  direction.     Some 
of  the  Babylonian  temples  were  oriented   so  that  the 
sun  should  shine  to  the  western  end  of  them  on  the 
day  of  the  spring  equinox  when  the  inundation  of  the 
rivers  began  on    which  the  prosperity  of  the  country 
so  much  depended.      The  temple  was  thus  an  astro- 
nomical instrument  of  a  high  degree  of  accuracy,  and 
the  priests  who  directed  its  building  and  served  in  it 
when   built   were   men   of  science    and    learning.      A 
religion  which  is  connected  with  the  heavenly  bodies, 
though  it  does  not  fully  supply  the  needs  of  the  lower 
orders  and  has  too  little  energy  to  cope  with  supersti- 
tion, tends  to  produce  a  priesthood  who  form  centres  of 
enlightenment  and  civilisation  throughout  the  country. 
This  was  in  the  highest  degree  the  case  in  Babylonia. 
To   these  old   astronomers   the  world  owes  the  sio-ns 
of  the  zodiac,  which  were  fixed  not  later  than  in  the 
fifth  millennium  B.C.,  and  in  which  we  see  how  early 
man  beheld  in  the  nightly  heavens  the  creatures  which 
on  earth  he  regarded  as  divine,  so  that  he  worshipped 
them  in  both  regions.     The  institution  of  the  Sabbath 
is   also    Babylonian  ;   whether   it   was   connected    with 
the   changes  of  the   moon,   or   with   a   week    of  days 
named  after  the  seven  planets,  is  not  certain.     Seven 
is  a  sacred  number  in  Babylonia,  as  we  find  in  many 
a  connection. 

My tholog-y.  —  We  come  lastly,  in  our  attempt  to 
enumerate  those  parts  of  Babylonian  religion  which  have 
entered  deeply  into  human  thought,  to  the  myths.  The 
heroic  legends  and  romances  are  the  most  interesting 
and  the  best  -  known  portions  of  the  newly  -  recovered 


CHAP.  VII  Babylon  and  Assyria  loi 

literature.  We  have  already  noticed  some  fragments 
of  mythology,  such  as  the  story  of  the  fish  -  god  who 
comes  up  daily  from  the  sea,  the  moon  being  the  father 
of  the  sun,  and  the  family  history  of  Ea  and  Davkina, 
with  the  sun  their  child.  The  two  latter  are  evidently 
inconsistent  with  each  other.  But  the  story  about 
the  son  of  Ea  and  Davkina  has  an  important  further 
development.  His  name  is  Duzu  or  Dumuzu,  and  he 
is  the  Tammuz  of  whom  we  hear  in  the  Bible  (Ezekiel 
viii.  14),  who  is  adored  by  women  raising  lamentations 
for  him.  He  is  said  to  be  the  sun-god  of  spring,  to 
whom  the  heat  of  summer  is  fatal,  and  who  dies  in 
June.  It  is  when  moisture  is  failing  from  the  ground 
that  he  is  bemoaned.  His  home  is  in  Eden,  for  Eden 
belongs  to  Babylonian  legend,  which  places  it  near 
Eridu.  There  grows  the  great  world-tree  which  the 
gods  love;  it  rises  from  the  centre  of  the  world,  and 
is  nourished  from  springs  which  Ea  himself  replenishes. 
It  is  a  cedar  (Yggdrasil,  the  ash-tree,  we  shall  find, 
occupies  the  same  position  with  the  Northern  Teutons) ; 
it  is  sometimes  found  in  a  highly  conventional  form  with 
the  figure  of  a  cherub  at  each  side  of  it,  each  of  whom 
holds  in  his  hand  a  fruit.  In  this  tree  scholars  recognise 
both  the  tree  of  life  and  the  tree  of  knowledge  with 
which  we  are  familiar.  The  knowledge  of  the  priests 
in  Babylonia  was  not  for  every  one,  but  was  jealously 
guarded,  and  kept  for  the  initiated  alone. 

From  Tammuz  we  naturally  pass  to  IstaP,  one  of  the 
few  goddesses  of  old  Babylonia,  and  by  far  the  most 
famous  of  them.  Istar  was  originally  the  goddess  of 
the  earth,  and  both  mother  and  sister  of  the  sun-god,  v 
for  we  are  led  to  believe  that  she  is  at  first  the  same 
as  Davkina.  The  great  myth  of  the  descent  of  Istap 
describes  how  she  goes  down  to  the  kingdom  of  the 
shades  to  seek  the  waters  that  shall  give  life  again  to 
her  bridegroom  Tammuz.  The  poem  in  which  the 
narrative  is  preserved  gives  a  description  of  the  "  house 
of  darkness,  where   they  behold    no   light,"   and  then 


I02  History  of  Religion  part  n 

tells  how,  at  the  orders  of  Ninkigal  or  Allat,  queen  of 
Hades,  Istar  is  deprived,  successively,  in  spite  of  her 
remonstrances,  of  all  her  ornaments,  and  how  the 
plague-demon  Namtar  is  bidden  to  strike  her  with  all 
manner  of  diseases.  The  result  of  Istar's  disappearance 
under  the  earth  is  that  all  love  and  courtship  cease 
both  among  men  and  the  lower  animals,  and  Ea  him- 
self is  appealed  to,  to  bring  to  an  end  so  unnatural  a 
state  of  affairs.  A  messenger  is  sent  to  the  lower 
regions  to  cause  the  release  of  Istar  and  the  reascent  of 
Tammuz.  This  goddess,  however,  is  known  not  only 
from  this  legend  ;  she  has  many  forms,  and  passed 
through  various  fortunes.  The  Istar  of  Erech  herself 
lures  Tammuz  to  his  destruction.  In  early  times  Istar 
is  also  the  evening  star,  the  bright  companion  of  the 
moon.  Her  leading  character,  however,  seems  to  be 
that  of  a  goddess  of  love.  Fertility  depends  on  her  ; 
she  goes  under  the  earth  to  find  her  lover.  In  this 
character  she  attracted  in  Babylonia  a  wprship  noted 
for  impurity,  which  under  the  name  of  Ashtoreth  is 
found  also  in  Phenicia  and  in  Syria.  There  is  also, 
however,  a  warlike  Istar,  a  strict  goddess  served  by 
Amazons,  and  capable  of  identification  with  the  Greek 
Artemis,  as  the  Istar  of  love  is  identified  with  Aphrodite. 
Much  more  primitive  than  the  legend  of  Istar  are 
aome  parts  of  the  Babylonian  accounts  of  the  creation. 
There  are  several  of  these  accounts,  some  newly  dis- 
covered. In  one  the  old  god  Ea  peoples  the  original 
chaos  with  a  variety  of  strange  monsters.  In  another 
the  biith  of  the  gods  is  narrated  as  well  as  that  of  the 
world  ;  we  find  also  that  chaos  is  itself  conceived  as  a 
female  monster,  a  dragon  of  evil,  and  the  god  has  to 
do  battle  with  this  power  of  darkness  and  evil,  and  to 
bring  light  and  the  habitable  world  up  from  its  realm. 
It  is  certainly  true  that  the  Babylonian  legends  of  the 
creation  are  crude  and  inconsistent  with  each  other,  and 
that  the  account  in  Genesis  belongs  to  a  much  higher 
order    of  thought.      The    Babylonian    account    of  the 


CHAP.  VII  Babylon  and  Assyria  ic 


J 


deluge  and  the  ark  is  more  closely  parallel  to  the  Bible 
narrative  ;  the  two  cannot  possibly  be  independent  of 
each  other,  and  there  may  be  no  impropriety  in  hold- 
ing that  the  Hebrew  writers  were  acquainted  with 
myths  of  general  diffusion  in  the  world  they  lived  in. 

The  State  Religion. — The  Babylonian  and  Assyrian 
religion  of  which  we  hear  in  the  Bible  {cf.  Isa.  xl.-lxvi.) 
is  the  splendid  worship  of  mighty  empires ;  it  has 
forgotten  its  humble  beginnings,  and  under  the  guidance 
of  large  priestly  and  learned  corporations  has  grown 
much  in  depth  and  purity.  Of  its  outward  magnificence 
the  monuments  furnish  ample  proof.  The  temple  of 
Bel-Merodach  at  Babylon  was  a  wonder  of  the  world. 
Being  the  god  of  the  prevailing  city  of  the  empire, 
Merodach  was  the  greatest  of  all  the  gods,  and  was 
reverenced  and  extolled  as  befitted  the  friend  and  patron 
of  the  greatest  of  monarchs.  His  son  Nebo  was  a 
prophet  and  a  god  of  wisdom.  What  Merodach  was 
to  Babylon,  Assur  was  to  Assyria ;  in  fact,  he  was  the 
only  god  peculiar  to  Assyria.  The  rule  that  as  religion 
grows  in  outward  splendour  it  also  gains  in  inward 
strength  and  spirituality  is  strikingly  exemplified  in 
the  case  before  us.  The  gods  have  come  to  be  moral 
powers,  who  really  care  for  men,  not  only  for  the  king, 
their  earthly  representative,  but  for  their  worshippers 
in  general.  Merodach  is  praised  for  his  mercy ;  he  not 
only  accompanies  the  king  in  his  wars,  of  which  the 
inscriptions  give  us  so  many  a  wearisome  catalogue, 
but  he  heals  the  sick,  he  brings  relief  to  him  who  is 
mourning  for  his  transgressions,  and  he  brings  life  out 
of  death  and  receives  the  soul  committed  to  his  mercy 
to  a  blessed  dwelling  above.  Perhaps  we  pass  here 
somewhat  beyond  the  early  period  of  the  religion  and 
touch  on  its  ultimate  phase.  The  penitential  hymns 
of  the  later  literature  form  a  strong  contrast  to  the 
magical  incantations,  which  fill  so  much  space  in  the 
Babylonian  sacred  literature.  The  confessions  they 
contain  are  not  very  spiritual ;  the  supplicant  bewails 


I04  History  of  Religion  part  ii 

his  sufferings  rather  than  his  sins.  Indeed,  he  rather 
infers  from  his  sufferings  that  he  has  sinned,  trodden, 
it  may  be,  where  he  ought  not  to  have  trodden,  or 
eaten  what  he  should  not  have  eaten,  than  confesses 
that  he  deserved  to  suffer  for  sins  of  which  he  is  aware. 
What  is  implored  is  outward  redress  or  ease,  not  inward 
peace.  The  removal" of  outward  ills  is  taken  as  forgive- 
ness. There  can  be  no  comparison  between  these 
hymns  and  those  of  the  Bible.  But  what  they  do  show 
is  the  rise  in  Babylonia  of  a  religion  for  the  individual. 
The  gods  are  sought  not  only  officially  by  the  state 
or  for  state  ends,  but  by  the  individual.  They  are 
believed  to  have  regard  to  individual  sufferings  ;  and 
the  friends  of  a  dying  person  believe  that  the  gods  care 
for  and  will  receive  his  soul. 

Our  knowledge  of  the  religion  of  these  lands  is  too 
imperfect  to  admit  of  wide  conclusions  being  drawn 
from  it.  We  know  what  the  higher  religion  of 
Babylonia  was ;  and  we  also  see  that  the  higher 
worship  never  entirely  prevailed  in  this  land ;  the  god, 
like  Bel  or  Assur,  who  bore  the  character  of  a  human 
over-lord,  never  drove  out  the  old  set  of  spirits,  nor 
brought  the  service  of  them  to  an  end.  As  in  the  case 
of  Egypt,  so  here  the  attempts  made  in  the  direction 
of  a  pure  and  spiritual  worship  met  with  no  ultimate 
success.  Babylon  and  Assyria  never  came  so  near  to 
Monotheism  as  did  Egypt  three  millenniums  before 
Christ.  Nabonidos,  the  last  king  of  Babylon,  collected 
all  the  gods  together  in  his  capital,  and  endeavoured  to 
organise  them  in  a  system  under  Merodach  as  their 
head  ;  but  this  led  to  religious  discord  rather  than  to 
peace,  since  the  minor  deities  vehemently  resented  the 
removal  of  their  images  from  their  accustomed  shrines, 
and  were  understood  to  refuse  their  aid  to  the  state  on 
the  new  conditions.  The  religion  of  Babylon  was  too 
much  broken  up  into  independent  local  cults  to  admit 
of  such  a  unification.  The  highest  that  was  reached 
was  that  one  great  god  was  adored  in  one  city,  another 


CHAP.  VII  Babylon  and  Assyria  105 

in  another,  with  some  depth  and  spirituality.  To 
nations  which  had  attained  a  higher  faith,  that  of 
Babylon  appeared  to  be  an  idolatrous  worship  of  many 
gods.  That  is  a  harsh  judgment.  This  religion  also 
had  life  in  it  and  advanced  from  a  lower  to  a  higher 
stage ;  from  a  timid  trafficking  with  spirits  to  a  service 
of  gods  who  were  ideal  heads  of  human  communities, 
and  friends  of  individual  men.  It  was  not  a  mere 
system,  as  the  world  has  been  accustomed  to  think,  of 
astrology  and  of  divination  of  other  kinds.  But  when 
Babylon  and  Assyria  ceased  to  be  independent  powers, 
and  became  provinces  of  Persia,  Bel  bowed  down  and 
Nebo  stooped,  not  to  rise  again.  The  world  of  that 
day  had  no  need  of  them.  It  had  already  attained  in 
more  than  one  country  to  a  higher  religion  than  that  of 
these  deities. 


Books  Recommended. 

The  Histories  of  Antiquity,  viz. — 

Maspero,  Histoire  ancienne  des  Peuples  de  V Orient, 

Duncker,    The   History  of  Antiquity,    from    the   German,    by   Evelyn 

Abbott. 
Rawlinson,  The  Five  Great  Monarchies  of  the  Ancient  Eastern  World: 

Chaldea,  Assyria,  Babylonia,  Media,  and  Persia. 
Ed.    Me3'er,     Geschichte    des    Alterthums,    1884.      The    first    volume 

embraces  the  History  of  the  East  to  the  foundation  of  the  Persian 

Empire. 
Schrader,  Die  Keilinschriften  und  das  alte  Testament,  1903. 
Ililprecht,  Old  Babylonian  Inscriptions  chiefly  from  Nippur,  1893. 
Records  of  the  Past,  I,  3,  5,  7,  9,  11. 
^di^ce's  Hibbert  Lectures,  1887. 
Tiele,  Egyptische  en  Mesopotantische  Godsdiensten. 
J  astro w,    The   Religion   of  Babylonia   and  Assyria,    1898.     The  most 

complete  account  of  the  whole  subject. 
,,         "  Religion  of  Babylonia,"  in  Dictionary  of  the  Bible,  vol.  v. 
,,         *'  On  the  Religion  of  the  Semites,"  in  Oxford  Proceedings,  vol.  i. 

p.  225,  sqq. 
F.  Jeremias  in  De  la  Saussaye,  pp.  246-347. 
Bezold,  Niiiiva  and  Babylon,   1903. 

E.  H.  W.  Johns,  The  Oldest  Code  of  Laws  in  the  World,  1903. 
'*  On  the  Code  of  Hammurabi."     E.  H.  W.  Johns,  in  Dictionary  of  the 

Bible,  vol.  v. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

CHINA 

The  Chinese  have  always  been  a  world  in  themselves, 
remote  from  other  races  of  men  ;  yet  they  developed  a 
civilisation  which  is  in  many  respects  worthy  to  be 
compared  with  that  of  India  or  of  the  West.  The 
people  who  made  gunpowder  and  paper  and  who 
printed  books,  long  before  any  of  these  things  were 
done  in  Europe,  might  naturally  think  themselves  the 
foremost  nation  of  the  earth.  Their  civilisation,  how- 
ever, has  exercised  no  influence  on  the  world  outside  of 
China,  nor  has  it  advanced  to  the  higher  achievements 
of  the  human  mind.  As  their  great  wall  secludes  them 
from  other  nations,  so  do  their  mental  habits  prevent 
them  from  a  free  interchange  of  ideas  with  foreigners. 
The  Mongolian  race,  indeed,  from  which,  like  the 
Hungarians  and  the  Finns,  they  are  descended,  is  so 
different  from  other  races  in  many  respects  that  some 
anthropologists  suppose  it  to  have  a  separate  origin. 
Phlegmatic  and  matter-of-fact  by  nature,  exact  and 
careful  in  practical  matters,  and  to  a  high  degree 
imitative  and  industrious,  the  Chinese  are  singularly 
devoid  of  imagination  and  indisposed  to  philosophy. 
Their  monosyllabic  and  uninflected  language,  belonging 
to  one  of  the  earliest  strata  of  human  speech,  and  ill 
fitted  to  express  abstract  or  poetical  ideas,  is  an  index 
to  their  whole  nature.  If  an  awakening,  as  various 
signs  appear  to  indicate,  is  now  at  hand  for  them,  no 

1 06 


CHAP.    VIII 


China  107 


one  can  tell  how  fast  it  will  proceed,  or  what  the  final 
issue  of  it  may  be. 

China  has  at  present  three  religions,  all  recognised 
by  the  state  and  represented  in  every  part  of  the 
country  —  viz.  Confucianism,  Taoism,  and  Buddhism. 
For  our  purpose  the  first  of  these  is  very  much  the  most 
important,  as  Taoism,  originally  a  philosophy,  quickly 
degenerated  into  a  system  of  magic,  and  Buddhism  is 
imported  into  China,  and  has  to  be  spoken  of  elsewhere. 
Confucianism,  being  the  direct  descendant  of  the  old 
state  religion  of  China,  is  the  native  growth  of  the  mind 
of  the  nation.  Like  the  Chinese  language,  the  state 
religion  belongs  to  a  very  early  formation,  and  presents 
the  symptoms  of  a  development  which  was  rapid  at 
first  but  was  early  arrested. 

■'  History  of  China. — Legend  goes  back  to  very  remote 
antiquity  and  tells  in  a  shadowy  way  of  the  arrival  of 
the  Chinese  from  the  West  (which  scholars  are  agreed 
in  regarding  as  a  fact),  and  of  early  potentates,  patterns 
to  all  their  successors,  who  treated  the  people  as  their 
children,  and  invented  for  them  the  arts  on  which  life 
in  China  most  depends.  History  proper  begins  about 
2000  B.C.,  though  the  Chinese  had  the  art  of  writing 
a  thousand  years  before  that.  Researches,  however, 
which  are  now  being  made  by  several  scholars,  seem 
likely  to  lead  to  the  conclusion  that  China  received  at 
least  the  seeds  of  civilisation  and  some  religious  ideas 
from  Mesopotamia.  That  Chinese  religion  resembles  in 
some  respects  that  of  Babylonia  was  mentioned  in  the 
last  chapter  (p.  94).  In  a  work  like  this  and  in  the 
present  state  of  knowledge  it  is  necessary  to  deal  with 
the  religion  of  China  as  an  isolated  one.  When  the 
history  of  the  country  opens,  the  character,  manners, 
and  institutions  of  the  people  are  already  fixed.  They 
are  already  civilised  and  have  an  organised  religion, 
though  how  all  this  came  about  we  cannot  tell.  The 
early  kings  are  men  of  piety,  inventors  of  arts,  and 
authors  of  fundamental  maxims  of  policy  ;  but  as  time 


io8  History  of  Religio7t  part  ii 

went  on  the  kings  grew  worse  and  lost  the  affections  of 
their  people.  In  the  twelfth  century  B.C.  the  Chow  ^ 
dynasty  came  into  power  and  gave  China  some  of  its 
best  rulers,  but  it  also  soon  fell  off;  the  country  broke 
up  into  a  number  of  separate  feudal  principalities  over 
which  the  central  government  lost  all  control,  and  in 
the  sixth  century  Confucius  is  found  wandering  from 
one  independent  state  to  another.  This  confusion  led  ->' 
in  the  third  century  B.C.  to  the  displacement  of  the 
Chow  by  the  Tsin  dynasty.  Shi-Hoang-Ti,  fourth 
ruler  of  this  line,  one  of  the  strongest  rulers  China  ever 
had,  assumed  the  title  of  Universal  Emperor.  He  beat 
back  the  enemies  of  China  beyond  the  frontier,  began 
the  building  of  the  great  wall,  and  broke  down  the 
power  of  the  feudal  rulers.  It  was  found,  however,  that 
the  feudal  system  still  lived  in  the  affections  of  the 
people,  and  as  it  was  the  religious  books  which  mainly 
kept  the  past  in  veneration,  the  emperor  ordered  their 
destruction  and  enforced  the  edict  with  great  rigour, 
y  The  House  of  Han,  however,  which  replaced  that  of 
Tsin  in  206  B.C.,  recovered  the  ancient  literature  of  the 
country  from  the  hiding-places  where  copies  of  the 
books  had  been  preserved,  and  established  in  accord- 
ance with  them  the  very  conservative  constitution 
which  has  lasted  to  this  day. 

Sources. — The  books  thus  condemned  and  thus  re- 
covered supply  us  with  our  knowledge  of  ancient  China 
and  of  its  religion.      They   are   political    rather   than 
religious  in  their 'nature.     China  has  no  Bible,  no  book  ^ 
guarded  by  the  ministers  of  religion  as  the  basis  of  the 
system  they  conduct ;   the  religious  teachers  of  China, 
if  there  are  any,  are  the  literati,  the  books  they  preserve 
and  study  are  the  Classics.     These  are  connected  with 
the  name  of  Confucius,  who  collected  or  edited  them,  and 
himself  wrote  one  of  them.     They  are  not  thought  to  be 
inspired,  but  are  revered  because  of  their  immemorial     . 
antiquity.     No  people  was  ever  more  completely  under  ^ 
the   influence   of  a   book,  or   set    of  books,    than    the 


CHAP.  VIII  China  109 

Chinese.  The  learned  class,  who  constitute  the  only 
nobility  of  China,  receive  their  whole  education  from 
the  books  ascribed  to  Confucius ;  which,  like  other 
authoritative  literatures,  contain  matter  of  various  kinds. 

The  Chinese  collection  consists  of  the  five  Classics 
(King)  and  the  four  books  (Shu).  The  former  were 
edited  by  Confucius ;  the  latter  are  by  the  disciples 
of  that  sage  or  by  Mencius,  a  distinguished  teacher 
in  his  school  about  a  century  after  him.  The  five 
Classics  are  the  most  sacred  of  all.  They  are  as 
follows : — 

I. — I.  The  Yih-king,  or  Book  of  Changes.  This  is 
a  divining  book ;  it  consists  of  a  set  of  interpreta- 
tions by  princes  of  the  twelfth  century  B.C.,  of  a  set 
of  lineal  figures.  The  system  is  in  itself  of  childlike 
simplicity,  but  use  and  age  have  collected  mysteries 
about  it.  It  was  exempted  from  the  proscription  of 
Shi-Hoang-Ti. 

2.  The  Shu -king,  or  Book  of  History,  contains 
speeches  and  documents  of  the  early  princes  from  the 
twenty-fourth  to  the  eighth  century  B.C. 

3.  The  Shi-king,  or  Book  of  Poetry,  consists  of  a 
collection  of  300  songs,  selected  by  Confucius  from  a 
mass  ten  times  as  great.  Some  of  these  pieces  are 
extremely  old. 

4.  The  Le  ke,  or  Record  of  Rites.  This  book  is 
said  to  have  been  composed  by  the  duke  of  Chow 
in  the  twelfth  century  B.C.,  and  is  the  principal  source 
of  information  about  the  ancient  state  religion  of  China. 
It  contains  precepts  not  only  for  religious  ceremonies, 
but  also  for  social  and  domestic  duties,  and  is  the 
Chinaman's  manual  of  conduct  to  the  present  day. 

5.  Chun  Tsew,  Spring  and  Autumn,  contains  the 
annals  of  the  principality  of  Loo,  of  which  Confucius 
was  a  native,  from  721-480  B.C.  They  are  extremely 
dry ;  and  if  we  could  understand  the  statement  of 
Mencius  that  Confucius  by  writing  them  (for  they  are 
his   own  work)  produced  a  great  effect  on  the  minds 


no  History  of  Religion  part  ii 

of  his  contemporaries,  many  things  about  Chinese 
religion  and  manners  would  be  clearer  to  us  than  they 
unfortunately  are. 

To  these  five  Classics  is  sometimes  added,  as  a  sixth, 
the  Hsiao-king,  or  Book  of  Filial  Piety,  a  conversation 
on  that  subject  between  Confucius  and  a  disciple. 

It  is  impossible  to  tell  how  much  Confucius  did  for 
these  old  books.  Some  hold  that  he  did  not  change 
them  much,  nor  put  into  them  much  of  his  own,  and 
that,  in  fact,  he  was  himself  indebted  to  these  books 
for  all  he  is  reported  to  have  taught.  On  the  other 
hand,  it  is  declared  that  he  made  the  ancient  books 
teach  his  own  doctrine,  and  left  out  all  that  did  not 
suit  him  ;  and,  in  confirmation  of  this  view,  the  fact 
is  pointed  out  that  while  these  books  as  we  have  them 
teach  pure  Confucianism,  another  religion  of  a  different 
spirit  was  growing  up  in  China  in  Confucius's  own  day, 
which  must  have  had  some  support  in  the  old  system. 
It  may  be  that  Confucius  did  not  care  to  report  to  us 
all  the  features  of  the  old  religion,  but  only  those  of 
which  he  approved.  But  the  information  given  us 
about  that  old  religion  is  admittedly  correct  so  far  as 
it  goes  ;  and  there  is  little  doubt  that  what  Confucius 
thought  best  in  it,  and  what  passed  through  him  into 
the  subsequent  religion  of  China,  was  its  most  char- 
acteristic and  most  important  part. 

II. — The  Classics  of  the  second  order  comprise  four 

books  : — 

1.  The  Lun  Vu,  or  Digested  Conversations  of  the 
Master;  or,  as  Dr.  Legge  calls  it,  T/ie  Confucian 
Analects.  It  is  from  this  book  that  we  derive  our 
information  about  the  sage  ;  it  was  compiled  probably 
by  the  disciples  of  his  disciples. 

2.  The  Ta-Heo,  or  Great  Learning,  and 

3.  The  Chung  Yung,  or  Doctrine  of  the  Mean,  are 
smaller  works,  giving  a  more  literary  form  to  the 
doctrine  of  the  sage. 

4.  The  Mang-tsze  contains  the  teachings  of  Mencius. 


CHAP.  VIII  China  1 1 1 

The  State  Religfion  of  Ancient  China-Confucius 
never  imagined  himself  to  be  a  reformer  of  the  reh'gion 
of  his  country.  The  religion  of  China  is  in  the  main 
the  same  to  this  day^  as  it  was  before  he  appeared, 
and  what  is  called  Confucianism  is  simply  that  old 
system.  That  the  worship  of  Confucius  himself  has 
been  added  to  it  does  not  involve  any  change  of  its 
structure.  It  is  already  well  developed  when  we  first 
see  it,  and  what  is  very  peculiar,  it  has  already  parted 
with  all  savage  and  irrational  elements.  There  is  no 
mythology ;  the  universal  legend  of  the  marriage  of 
heaven  and  earth  is  dimly  recognisable,  but  there  is 
no  set  of  primitive  stories  about  the  gods.  Of  human 
sacrifice  there  is  only  one  ancient  instance ;  there  are 
no  rites  with  anything  savage  or  cruel  about  them. 
Everything  is  proper,  dignified,  and  well  arranged. 
The  deities  are  beings  worthy  to  be  worshipped,  and 
they  exact  no  meaningless  services.  There  is  nothing 
in  any  part  of  the  religion  to  disturb  the  propriety  of 
the  worshipper  or  to  suggest  any  doubts  to  his  mind. 
In  no  other  religion  of  the  world  do  we  find  every- 
thing in  such  excellent  order. 

On  the  other  hand,  it  is  not  a  highly-dev^eloped 
religion.  Its  beliefs  are  those  of  extremely  early  times, 
and  represent  a  stage  of  thought  at  which  no  other 
national  religion  stood  still.  The  organisation  common 
to  developed  systems  is  entirely  wanting  ;  there  is  no 
idol,  no  priestly  class,  no  Bible,  no  theology ;  the 
most  important  doctrines  are  left  so  vague  and  un- 
determined that  scholars  interpret  them  in  opposite 
ways.  It  is  a  religion  in  which,  just  as  in  the  primi- 
tive stage,  outward  acts  are  everything,  the  doctrine 
nothing,  and  which  is  not  regulated  by  an  organised 
code  but  by  custom  and  precedent.  All  these  marks 
point  to  a  formation  in  very  early  times,  and  to  a 
very  early  arrest  of  growth,  before  the  ordinary  develop- 

^  The  working  religion  of  the  present  day  is  fully  described  by  Prof,  de 
Groot  in  De  la  Saussaye,  Lehrbuch,  Third  edition. 


1 1 2  History  of  Religion  part  ii 

ments  of  mythology  and  doctrine,  priesthood,  ritual, 
and  sacred  literature  had  time  to  take  place.  They 
also  point  to  the  operation  of  some  powerful  cause, 
which,  when  the  religion  had  developed  its  main  features, 
was  able  to  suppress  older  beliefs  and  practices,  and 
lead  the  nation  to  devote  itself  altogether  to  the  newer 
faith.  How  this  took  place  we  can  only  conjecture, 
but  certainly  it  could  never  have  been  done  unless 
the  new  faith  and  the  national  character  had  fitted 
each  other  perfectly.  The  classical  religion  may,  as 
Prof,  de  Groot  says,  have  come  into  existence  along 
with  the  classical  constitution  set  up  by  the  Han 
dynasty  2000  years  ago.  But  it  must  have  been 
ready  to  enter  into  this  position. 

The  objects  of  worship  in  the  Chinese  religion 
arrange  themselves  in  three  classes.  The  Chinaman 
of  old  worshipped  and  his  descendant  of  to  -  day 
worships  still — 

1.  Heaven. 

2.  Spirits  of  various  kinds,  other  than  human. 

3.  The  spirits  of  dead  ancestors. 

I.  Heaven  (Thian)  is  the  principal  Chinese  deity;  in 
strictness  we  must  say  the  sole  deity,  for  there  is  no 
family  of  upper  gods ;  heaven  receives  all  the  worship 
that  is  directed  aloft.  It  is  the  clear  vault,  the  friendly 
ever-present  and  all-seeing  blue  that  is  meant,  not  the 
windy  nor  the  rainy  sky,  but  that  which  is  above  all 
agitations,  and  which  all  beings  of  the  air  or  of  the 
earth  look  up  to  and  serve.  It  is  conceived  as  living. 
It  is  not  a  separable  spirit,  not  a  power  behind,  that 
is  worshipped,  but  heaven  itself, — the  living  heaven 
of  that  early  thought,  which  has  not  yet  come  to 
distinguish  between  matter  and  spirit,  —  the  living 
heaven  which  is  over  all,  knows  all,  orders  and  governs 
all. 

To  this  heaven  other  names  are  given,  even  in  the 
olde.st  writings  —  Ti,  Ruler ;  or  Shang-ti,  Supreme 
Ruler.     Did  the  Chinese  conceive  this  ruler  as  identical 


CHAP.  VI 11  Ckina  113 

with  heaven,  or  as  a  personality  dwelling  in  it  or  above 
it?  It  has  been  held  that  the  two  beliefs  are  not  the 
same  ;  that  the  Chinese  of  the  earliest  times  worshipped 
the  Supreme  Ruler,  i.e.  the  one  God,  Ti,  and  afterwards 
fell  away  from  that  position  of  pure  monotheism  and 
declined  to  the  worship  of  the  material  object,  heaven. 
The  early  Catholic  missionaries  argued  that  the  Chinese 
Shang-ti  was  equivalent  to  the  Christian  "God,"  and 
signified  a  being  other  than  the  sky,  the  Supreme 
Power  of  the  universe.  The  Chinese,  however,  gener- 
ally denied  that  they  made  any  such  distinction,^  and 
even  declared  that  they  could  not  understand  it.  The 
names  Heaven  and  Supreme  Ruler  are  used  by  them 
indiscriminately :  one  notices  that  Confucius  does  not 
use  the  personal  form,  but  only  speaks  of  heaven ; 
"  heaven,"  he  says,  when  feeling  distressed,  "  is  destroy- 
ing me."  We  have  here,  therefore,  an  early  form  of 
nature-worship. 

The  Supreme  Power  directs  all  things,  and  is  an 
ever-present  governor  both  in  the  natural  and  in  the 
moral  sphere.  These  two  spheres  indeed  are  not 
regarded  as  distinct.  Nature  reveals  in  all  its  changes 
the  mind  of  its  ruler,  and  human  conduct  is  regarded 
as  an  outward  thing,  as  a  phenomenon  on  the  same 
plane  with  the  movements  of  nature ;  the  two  are 
supposed  to  be  part  of  one  system  and  to  act  directly 
on  each  other.  As  Heaven  both  governs  the  weather 
and  looks  after  men's  actions,  for  "every  day  heaven 
witnesses  our  actions  and  is  present  in  the  places  where 
we  are,"  these   two  aspects  of  providence  are  closely 

^  Dr.  Legge,  while  admitting  that  the  Chinese  originally  worshipped 
the  vault  of  heaven  itself,  maintains  that  they  got  past  the  early  mode 
of  thought  which  considers  every  natural  object  as  animated,  before  the 
dawn  of  history,  and  became  pure  theists,  believers  in  a  supreme  spiritual 
being.  Confucius  he  considers  to  have  held  a  lower  religious  position  than 
his  countrymen  had  already  attained  to.  He  also  regards  the  worship  of 
spirits  and  of  ancestors  as  a  later  perversion  and  degradation  of  the  original 
religion  of  one  god.  In  these  positions  he  is  followed  by  Professor  Giles, 
Oxford  Proceedings,  vol.  i.  p.  105,  sqq. 

H 


1 1 4  History  of  Religion  part  ii 

blended  and  are  in  fact  the  same.  Heaven  makes  its 
will  known  in  a  natural  way.  It  is  one  of  the  most 
peculiar  features  of  Chinese  religion  that  it  knows  no 
revelation,  no  miracles,  no  divine  interferences.  It  has 
a  belief  in  destiny,  Ming ;  every  one  has  his  Ming, 
but  it  is  only  known  when  it  is  accomplished.  "  Does 
Heaven  plainly  declare  its  Ming?"  Confucius  is  asked; 
and  he  replies,  "  No,  heaven  speaks  not ;  by  the  order 
of  events  its  will  is  known,  not  otherwise."  Man  learns 
by  the  external  occurrences  how  Heaven  is  disposed 
towards  him.  When  there  is  excessive  ram  or  long 
drought,  this  shows  that  the  harmony  between  Heaven 
and  the  earth  is  disturbed.  It  belongs  to  the  emperor 
to  put  this  right.  He  alone  is  entitled  to  offer  sacrifice 
to  Heaven ;  he  stands  in  the  closest  relation  to  Heaven, 
who  is  the  ancestor  of  his  house ;  and  when  Heaven 
is  seen  to  be  displeased,  the  emperor  must  restore 
the  harmony  by  governing  his  subjects  better  or  by 
sacrifices.  In  an  extreme  case,  when  the  emperor 
is  seen  to  have  fallen  under  the  displeasure  of  Heaven, 
the  conclusion  is  drawn  that  he  must  no  longer  be 
emperor.  The  people  then  are  entitled  to  depose  him 
and  to  set  up  a  new  ruler,  through  whom  the  necessary 
transactions  with  Heaven  can  be  carried  on.  The  belief 
has  always  been  held  in  China,  at  least  theoretically, 
and  is  operative  to  this  day,  that  it  can  be  known  when 
Heaven  has  rejected  a  ruler,  and  that  it  belongs  to 
the  people  to  carry  out  that  sentence. 

2.  The  Spirits. — The  worship  "of  the  spirits"  is  a 
primary  religious  duty  for  the  Chinaman.  The  spirits, 
however,  are  an  ill-defined  set  of  beings ;  they  are 
generally  spoken  of  in  the  plural  number,  and  sacrifice 
was  offered  to  them  as  a  body,  no  particular  spirits 
being  named.  The  spirits  are  connected  with  natural 
objects,  every  part  of  nature  has  its  spirit.  The  sun, 
the  moon,  the  five  planets,  clouds,  rain,  wind,  the  five 
great  mountains,  but  also  every  smaller  mountain,  the 
rivers,  each  district,  and  a  thousand  other  things,  all 


CHAP,  vin 


China  115 


have  their  spirits.^  The  spirits  are  not  flitting  about 
capriciously,  but  have  been  collected  together  and 
organised  in  a  hierarchy,  and  this  has  loosened  their 
connection  with  natural  objects.  They  are  spoken  of 
as  a  set  of  beings  who  may  be  addressed  as  a  body. 
A  prince  alone  may  sacrifice  to  the  spirit  of  the  earth, 
and  to  those  of  the  mountains  and  rivers  of  his  territory. 
But  to  the  spirits  in  general  all  may  and  should  pray ; 
they  assist  those  who  pay  them  reverence  and  sacrifice 
to  them.  It  will  be  seen  that  the  worship  of  heaven 
and  that  of  the  spirits  are  kept  separate.  The  former 
is  the  imperial  worship  ;  the  emperor  alone  is  competent 
to  attend  to  it.  The  latter  is  the  official  worship  of 
minor  states.  Nor  are  the  two  sets  of  deities  wrought 
into  a  homogeneous  system ;  we  hear  that  the  spirits, 
while  subordinate  to  Shang-ti,  are  not  his  messengers. 
The  surmise  is  not  to  be  avoided  that  these  two 
worships  came  originally  from  different  circles  of  ideas, 
and  have  not  been  perfectly  blended.  The  worship 
of  heaven  belongs  to  the  higher  nature-worship,  that 
of  the  spirits  to  the  lower ;  the  latter  is  animistic,  it 
is  a  worship  of  detached  spirits,  while  the  former  is 
a  worship  of  the  natural  object  itself  The  spirits  are 
all  good  ;  there  are  scarcely  any  bad  spirits  in  Chinese 
belief 

3.  Ancestors. — The  worship  of  ancestors  is  that  which 
is  assigned  to  the  private  individual.  He  does  not 
approach  Shang-ti  any  more  than  he  would  address 
the  emperor  on  earth ;  his  working  religion  is  directed 
to  his  ancestors.  The  Chinese  believed  in  the  continu- 
ance of  the  soul  after  death,  and  addressed  solemn 
invitations  to  it  to  return  to  the  body  it  had  forsaken. 
Their  belief  can  scarcely  be  described  as  that  in  personal 

^  The  Japanese  official  religion,  "Shinto"  (  =  way  of  the  gods,  as  dis- 
tinguished from  Butsudo,  way  of  Buddha,  i.e.  Japanese  Buddhism),  an 
easy  worship  of  numberless  spirits,  without  sacrifices  and  without  any 
moral  doctrine,  is  allied  to  this  branch  of  the  religion  of  China  ;  as  also 
is  the  religion  of  Corea.  Shin-to  is  not  ancestral  worship,  and  recognises 
no  life  after  death. 


ii6  History  of  Religion  part  ii 

immortality ;  it  is  the  continuance  of  the  family  rather 
than  of  the  person  that  is  thought  of.  The  individual 
does  not  look  forward  to  his  own  future  life  or  allow 
that  to  influence  him  ;  there  is  little  trace  of  any  belief 
in  future  rewards  and  punishments.  China  has  no 
heaven  and  no  hell.  It  is  the  past,  not  the  future, 
that  influences  the  present  ;  the  departed  members  of 
the  family  are  believed  to  be  still  attached  to  it,  and 
to  have  become  its  tutelary  spirits.  In  every  house 
there  is  a  hall  of  ancestors,  where  worship  and  sacrifice 
is  offered  to  them,  and  many  even  of  the  details  of  this 
worship  remind  us  strongly  of  the  way  in  which  the 
Romans  served  their  family  heroes.  Tablets  belonging 
to  the  ancestors  are  placed  in  this  hall ;  and  to  these 
they  are  supposed  to  come  when  properly  invoked,  so 
as  to  be  present  with  the  family.  At  every  important 
family  event  they  are  summoned  to  attend.  This 
worship  has  to  be  rendered  by  husband  and  wife  jointly, 
so  that  marriage  is  necessary  for  its  performance,  and 
an  early  marriage  is  a  religious  duty. 

The  family  sacrifice,  like  all  sacrifices  in  China,  is 
of  the  nature  of  a  banquet,  at  which  the  living  members 
of  the  family,  and  the  spirits  who  have  been  summoned, 
eat  and  drink  together.  To  heighten  the  illusion,  the 
grandson  was  sometimes  dressed  in  the  clothes  of  the 
departed  head  of  the  house  and  made  the  principal 
figure  of  the  celebration — 

The  dead  cannot  in  form  be  here, 
But  there  are  those  their  part  who  bear ; 
We  lead  them  to  the  highest  seat 
•     And  beg  that  they  will  drink  and  eat : 
So  shall  our  sires  our  service  own, 
And  deign  our  happiness  to  crown 
With  blessings  still  more  bright.* 

It  is  not  only  in  the  family  that  ancestors  are  adored. 
The  emperor  sacrifices  in  a  public  capacity  to  all  the 
ancestors  of  his  own  line,  and  also  to  all  his  predecessors 

,   *  Shi-king,  II.  vi.  5. 


CHAP.  VIII  China  117 

on  the  throne ;  a  magistrate  to  all  who  have  occupied 
his  office  before  him.  Ancient  China  possessed  an 
elaborate  ritual,  and  occasions  of  sacrifice  were  frequent. 
Every  change  of  season  every  portent  of  nature,  every 
important  step  either  in  public  or  in  private  life,  required 
its  consecration.  It  is  in  accordance  with  the  genius  of 
the  people  that  the  sacrifices  are  not  of  the  nature  of 
propitiation,  but  expressions  of  gratitude  and  devotion 
merely.  Asceticism  has  no  place  in  this  religion;  every-  ' 
thing  in  it  is  bright  and  sensible.  He  who  is  to  offer  a 
sacrifice  prepares  himself  by  prayer  and  retirement  to 
do  so  worthily  ;  but  beyond  this  reasonable  measure 
there  is  no  afflicting  of  the  soul,  and  in  the  prayers 
belonging  to  the  occasion  self-humiliation  and  con- 
fession have  no  place,  but  only  thanksgivings  and 
petitions.  The  petitions  are  for  worldly  benefits  and 
furtherance  ;  the  sacrifices  are  means  of  procuring  these 
from  the  heavenly  powers.  They  consist  chiefly  of^' 
animal  victims,  but  fruits  are  also  used,  and  with  the 
importance  of  the  occasion  the  variety  and  costliness 
of  the  offerings  increase.  Elaborate  music  also  accom- 
panies great  sacrifices,  and  is  thought  to  be  very  accept- 
able to  the  heavenly  powers.  Religion  is  not  separated 
from  life  in  China.  There  is  no  special  class  to  take 
care  of  it ;  every  one  has  to  attend  himself  to  those 
sacrifices  which  are  incumbent  on  him;  this  is  a  natural, 
matter-of-course  part  of  a  man's  duty.  As  there  is  no 
Bible,  there  is  no  religious  instruction,  and  the  doctrine 
is  quite  vague  and  undefined.  The  ritual,  however,  is 
fixed  by  tradition  in  every  detail,  and  if  a  man  attends 
to  it  he  does  his  duty  ;  religion  is  a  set  of  acts  properly 
and  exactly  done,  the  proper  person  sacrificing  always 
to  the  proper  object  in  the  proper  way. 

Confucius  was  not  a  man  who  tried  to  change  the 
religion  of  his  country  ;  indeed,  he  disliked  to  talk  of 
religious  subjects,  and  he  practised  reverently  the 
religion  which  had  long  prevailed  in  China.  His  con- 
versation was  chiefly  about  what  we  should  call  worldly 


ii8  History  of  Religion  part  ii 

matters,  and  it  is  hard  to  see  why  the  religion  of  China, 
the  same  after  him  as  it  had  been  before  him,  should 
be  called  by  his  name.  What  led  to  the  connection 
was:  (i)  That  he  taught  in  a  clear  and  simple  way,  as 
had  never  been  done  before,  the  theory  of  government 
and  morals  which  lies  at  the  root  of  Chinese  religion, 
and  thus  did  something,  though  unconsciously,  to 
provide  that  religion  with  a  doctrine.  And  (2)  that 
he  collected  and  edited  the  books  which  are  the  only 
literary  documents  the  religion  has,  and  which  have 
formed  ever  since  the  study  of  the  ruling  classes 
in  China.  Receiving  these  books  at  his  hands,  they 
have  naturally  looked  to  him  as  the  prophet  of  their 
faith. 

His  Life. — Kung-fu-tsze  {i.e.  Master  Kong  ;  the  name 
was  Latinised  by  the  Jesuits)  is  better  known  to  us  than 
most  other  religious  founders.  He  lived  to  the  age  of 
seventy-three,  surrounded  by  admiring  disciples,  who 
remembered  what  they  saw  in  him  and  heard  from 
his  lips  ;  and  this  tradition  is  preserved  in  the  Lun  J 
Vu,  Digested  Conversations,^  a  work  compiled,  as  we 
observed,  by  disciples  of  the  second  generation.  The 
supernatural  element  which  in  other  cases  gathered  so 
quickly  round  a  venerated  figure,  is  here  entirely  absent; 
in  China  such  growths  do  not  take  place.  There  may 
be  some  tendency  to  idealise  the  moral  greatness  of 
the  sage,  but  there  are  also  passages  in  which  this 
tendency  evidently  has  not  been  at  work  ;  both  in  its 
candour  and  in  the  homeliness  of  much  that  is  reported, 
the  book  invites  confidence  as  a  genuine  record.  We 
see  the  sage  as  the  diligence  of  students  in  the  present 
generation  enables  us  to  see  Kant  or  Wordsworth ; 
we  hear  his  opinions  on  a  great  variety  of  subjects ; 
we  see  how  he  behaved  on  occasions  of  state  and  at 
his  meals  in  private,  towards  princes  and  towards 
common  men  ;  we  laugh  at  his  jokes  and  sigh  with 
him  at  his  privations. 

^  Dr.  Legge,  Confucian  Analects. 


CHAP.  VIII  China  119 

He  was  born  in  551  B.C.  in  a  good  rank  of  society,  but 
was  brought  up  in  poverty,  and  owed  all  his  success  to 
his  own  merits.  The  bent  of  his  mind  showed  itself 
early ;  as  a  child  he  amused  himself  with  playing  at 
ceremonies ;  at  thirteen,  he  tells  us,  he  bent  his  mind 
to  learning,  the  subject  of  his  studies  being  history  and 
poetry,  the  ceremonies  and  the  music  of  the  empire. 
He  early  arrived  at  the  views  he  always  afterwards 
held  as  to  the  proper  way  to  govern  a  people,  and  he 
believed  with  all  the  faith  of  an  enthusiast  that  a  vast 
improvement  of  society  would  follow  the  adoption  of 
his  method.  It  was  to  public  employment  that  he 
aspired  from  an  early  period  of  life ;  but  he  did  not 
readily  find  it  in  the  unquiet  times  in  which  his  lot  was 
cast.  He  did  enjoy  office  for  certain  brief  periods,  and 
marvellous  things  are  told  of  the  reformation  of  manners 
which  at  once  attended  his  efforts  as  a  governor.  All 
got  their  due ;  there  was  no  thieving,  and  there  was 
no  occasion  to  put  the  penal  laws  in  execution,  for  no 
offenders  showed  themselves.  What  was  the  method 
which  was  held  to  have  had  such  results  ?  In  the 
counsels  which  he  gave  to  various  rulers  who  applied 
to  him  this  is  set  forth.  He  believed  the  power  of 
example  to  be  capable  of  effecting  all  that  a  ruler 
should  desire.  Punishments  might  be  dispensed  with, 
and  excessive  pains  need  not  be  bestowed  on  the 
machinery  of  government,  but  a  prince  who  has 
"rectified"  himself  will  soon  have  his  people  "rectified" 
too.  The  first  task  of  a  ruler  is  to  "rectify  names"; 
i.e.  there  is  good  government  when  the  prince  is  really 
a  prince  and  the  minister  a  minister,  when  the  father 
is  a  real  father  and  the  son  a  real  son.  The  perfect 
order  consists  of  the  due  observance  by  each  rank  of 
the  duties  belonging  to  it ;  there  is  to  be  a  well- 
regulated  hierarchy  in  which  each  understands  his 
function  and  acts  it  out.  The  people  are  naturally 
good  and  docile,  he  held,  and  if  they  are  well  governed 
they  will  not  do  wrong  even  though  rewards  be  offered 


I20  History  of  Religion  part  ii 

for  it.  Thus  by  docile  respect  to  tradition  and  authority, 
which  all  men  are  willing  to  pay  if  properly  guided 
towards  it,  the  pillars  of  the  state  are  established. 

His  Doctrine. — This  is  the  truth  which  Confucius 
preached  most  earnestly.  He  spoke  of  heaven  but 
seldom,  and  of  the  spirits  he  professed  no  certain 
knowledge  ;  he  declared  towards  the  end  of  his  life 
that  he  had  not  prayed  for  many  years.  He  was  a 
diligent  frequenter  of  all  religious  ceremonies  and  a 
strong  upholder  of  the  old  order,  but  his  interest  in 
these  things  was  not  speculative  or  mystical,  but 
entirely  practical.  He  regarded  himself  as  a  teacher 
of  virtue,  not  of  religious  doctrine ;  his  watchword  was 
"propriety,"  the  dutiful  observance  of  all  right  and 
customary  rules  of  conduct.  Yet  there  is  not  wanting 
an  ideal  element  in  his  doctrine.  He  enounces  the 
theory,  of  which  the  whole  of  Chinese  religion  is  the 
outward  expression,  that  the  universe  in  all  its  parts,  / 
in  nature  and  in  man,  is  an  order  ;  that  that  order  is 
declared  to  man  alike  in  the  ordinances  of  outward 
nature,  in  the  constitution  of  society  with  its  various 
ranks  and  classes,  and  in  the  ritual  of  religion ;  and 
that  it  is  the  whole  duty  of  man  to  know  that  order 
and  to  conform  himself  to  it.  The  theory  is  one  in  ^/ 
which  the  state  is  all,  the  individual  nothing,  and  in 
which  the  present  is  entirely  crushed  under  the  dead 
hand  of  the  past,  and  all  originality  and  progress  con- 
demned even  before  they  appear.  If  religion  has  been 
delivered  from  all  that  is  unseemly  and  irrational,  it 
has  also,  at  least  to  Western  eyes,  lost  much  of  its 
interest ;  the  enthusiasms  and  excitements  of  its  early 
stages  have  departed,  and  no  new  enthusiasm  has  come 
in  their  place ;  no  great  god-wrought  deliverance  thrills 
the  memory  of  posterity,  no  local  cults  excite  excep- 
tional devotion,  no  divine  historical  figure  attracts  to 
itself  personal  affection.  Religion  has  cast  off  fear  but 
has  not  yet  risen  to  the  inspiration  of  love.  The 
domestic  worship  came   nearest  to  this,  for  the  other 


CHAP.   VIII 


China  '  121 


worships  are  cold  and  distant  indeed  ;  but  that  worship 
was  a  powerful  influence  for  the  prevention  of  progress. 
The  Christian  text  which  hallows  individual  daring  and  -^ 
innovation,  by  bidding  a  man  put  his  convictions  above 
his  father  and  mother,  would  be  a  shocking  impiety  to 
Chinese  ears. 

A  temple  was  built  to  Confucius  after  his  death  and 
his  worship  was  added  to  the  state  religion.  The 
attempt  made  by  the  emperor  Shi-Hoang-Ti  in  the 
third  century  after  his  death  to  suppress  his  memory 
and  the  books  connected  with  his  name,  was,  though 
conducted  with  great  vigour,  unsuccessful.  The  teach-  -^ 
ing  of  Mencius  (371-28^  B.C.),  the  most  distinguished 
of  his  disciples,  added  no  new  element  to  that  of 
Confucius.  Two  movements,  however,  have  to  be 
noticed,  which  in  different  ways  aimed  at  giving  some- 
thing richer  and  deeper  than  Confucianism,  and  to 
which  China  owes  the  two  additional  religions  of 
Taoism  and  Buddhism. 

Taoism  looks  to  Lao-tsze  as  its  founder ;  but  it  has  "^ 
no  personal  founder  and  is  composed  of  older  elements, 
Lao  was  a  philosopher  who  lived  at  the  same  time  with 
Confucius,  though  half  a  century  older ;  Confucius  met 
him,  as  we  hear  in  the  Analects,  and  spoke  of  him  with 
great  respect.  His  work,  the  Tao-te-king,  has  been  pre- 
served, and  though  few  profess  to  understand  it,  a  general 
idea  of  his  thought  may  be  gathered  from  it.  Lao,  like 
Confucius,  founds  on  the  existing  system  ;  he  quotes 
largely  from  older  works,  and  there  are  sayings  common 
to  both  the  sages.  Metaphysical  thought,  however,  which 
with  Confucius  was  implied  rather  than  reasoned  out, 
here  stands  in  the  forefront.  Lao's  system  is  a  philo- 
sophy applied  practically.  Tao,  the  ruling  idea  of  the 
system,  from  which  both  it  and  the  religion  which 
followed  it  are  named,  is  variously  rendered  Reason,  '^ 
Nature,  the  Way  ;  the  last  is  '^the  nearest,  though  by  no 
means  a  full  rendering  of  it.  By  the  manifold  opera- 
tions  attributed   to   it,   it   reminds   us   of    the    Indian 


1 2  2  History  of  Religion  part  ii 

Brahma,  and  the  riddle  of  Lao's  obscurity  has  been 
proposed  to  be  solved  by  the  supposition  that  he  was 
dealing  with  a  doctrine  imported  from  India  which 
Chinese  forms  of  speech  could  but  imperfectly  express.^ 
Tao  is  not  personal,  but  something  that  precedes  all 
persons,  all  particular  beings.  It  was  there  before 
heaven  was ;  all  things  are  from  it  and  return  to  it  at 
last.  It  is  the  principle  at  the  root  and  the  beginning 
of  all  things,  by  which  they  move,  without  haste  or 
struggle,  ambition  or  confusion.  Existing  first  absolute 
and  undeveloped,  it  has  now  been  expressed ;  men  can 
know  it,  and  the  secret  of  all  goodness,  all  success  both 
for  the  individual  and  for  the  state,  is  to  know  Tao  and 
live  in  rt.  This  makes  a  man  superior  to  all  rules 
and  conventions ;  at  home  with  himself  he  is  superior 
to  the  world ;  he  does  not  dissipate  his  energies  in 
learning  a  great  number  of  outward  things,  but  acts 
spontaneously  from  an  inner  impulse.  In  this  way  the 
philosopher  looked  for  a  return  of  society  to  simpler 
manners ;  he  even  imagined  that  men  might  consent 
to  put  away  the  material  arts  of  which  they  thought 
so  much,  and  content  themselves  with  living  according 
to  wisdom  and  being  governed  by  the  wisest. 

The  moral  precepts  of  Lao  are  often  of  singular 
beauty  and  show  a  much  deeper  insight  than  the 
cold  teaching  of  Confucius.  Lao  taught  the  golden 
rule :  "  Recompense  injury,"  he  said,  "  with  kindness."  ^ 
Confucius,  on  being  asked  about  this,  did  not  agree 
with  Lao,  but  declared  that  kindness  ought  to  be 
recompensed  with  kindness,  but  injury  with  justice, 
as  if  private  morality  ought  not  to  rise  higher  than 
public  policy.  "  Resent  it  not  when  you  are  reviled," 
Lao  teaches;  and  "He  who  overcomes  others  is  strong; 
he  who  overcomes  himself  is  mighty."  "He  who  knows 
when  he  has  enough  is  rich."  "The  weakest  things 
in  the  world  subjugate  the  strongest."     The  Book  of 

'  '•  Lao-Tzeu  et  le  Brahmanisme,"  by  E.  Guimet  in  the  Verhandlungen 
of  the  Basal  Conference,  1904. 


CHAP.  VIII  China  123 

Recompenses,  which  is  the  practical  manual  of  Taoists 
and  is  universally  read  in  China,  sets  up  a  high  ideal 
of  goodness,  and  claims  to  be  studied  with  devotion  and 
earnestness.  The  task  of  self-discipline  is  represented 
as  one  requiring  faith  and  courage,  the  continuous 
efforts  of  a  lifetime,  and  unceasing  watchfulness.  If  -^ 
we  judge  Taoism  either  by  its  philosophy  or  by  its 
morals,  we  must  assign  it  a  high  rank  among  the 
efforts  which  have  been  made  to  guide  men  in  the 
way  of  wisdom.  As  a  religion,  however,  it  is  a  dismal  • 
failure,  and  shows  how  little  philosophy  and  morals 
can  do  without  a  historical  religious  framework  to 
support  them.  Taoism  was  not  at  first  a  religion, 
and  was  not  fitted  to  become  one,  as  it  neither  offered 
any  sacred  objects  of  its  own  for  pious  sentiment  to 
cling  to,  nor,  like  Confucianism,  leant  upon  the  state 
system.  The  religion  which  looks  to  Lao  as  its  chief 
figure  is  not  based  on  his  teaching ;  at  most  it  is  con- 
nected with  some  of  his  less  important  doctrines.  It 
did  not  take  a  place  in  the  world  till  five  centuries 
after  the  philosopher's  death,  and  its  rise  was  due 
partly  to  the  emperor  named  above  (p.  121),  who  was 
opposed  to  Confucius,  and  partly  to  teachers  who 
brought  forward  isolated  doctrines  of  Lao's  system 
which  admitted  of  a  popular  application.  When  the 
religion  appears  it  is  a  system  not  of  philosophy  but 
of  magic.  Lao  had  spoken  of  immortality  as  the 
portion  of  those  who  lived  according  to  Tao  ;  under 
the  Chin  dynasty  (220  B.C.)  Taoism  is  engaged  in  a 
search  for  the  fairy  islands,  where  the  herb  of  im- 
mortality is  to  be  found  ;  in  the  first  century  of  our 
era  the  head  of  Taoism  is  devising  a  pill  which  shall 
renew  his  youth.  When  Buddhism  enters  China,  in  the  ^ 
same  century  Taoism  borrows  from  it  the  apparatus  of 
religion,  temples,  monasteries,  and  liturgies,  and  sets 
out  on  its  career  as  a  church. 

It  was  not  without  reason  that  Buddhism  was  sent 
for,  if  we  are  truly  informed,  by  the  rulers  of  China, 


124  History  of  Religion  part  ii 

or  that  it  spread  over  the  country,  in  the  first  century 
of  our  era.  Neither  Confucianism  nor  Taoism  is  a  -^ 
religion,  in  the  full  sense  of  the  term,  as  supplying 
by  intercourse  with  higher  beings  an  inspiration  for 
life.  The  former  is  regulative  and  no  more ;  the  latter 
is  a  mere  set  of  devices  for  obtaining  benefits  from 
mysterious  powers.  Buddhism,  on  the  contrary,  appeals, 
as  we  shall  see  when  we  consider  it  in  connection  with 
India,  to  unselfish  motives,  and  insists  on  the  solemn 
responsibilities  of  individual  life  in  such  a  way  as  to 
raise  the  value  of  the  human  person.  As  it  appeared 
in  China  it  is  richer  than  we  shall  find  it  in  India  ; 
it  has  a  god,  unknown  to  southern  Buddhism,  and  it 
has  a  goddess  Kouan  Yin,  "the  being  who  hears  the 
cries  of  men,"  sometimes  represented  with  a  child  on 
her  knee,  just  like  a  Western  Madonna.  While  still 
essentially  monastic,  it  offers  salvation  and  a  way  of 
life  to  all.  To  faith  in  Buddha  the  merciful  one  is 
also  added  a  belief  in  the  paradise  in  which  he 
receives  believers.  Thus  a  popular  worship  is  pro- 
vided, which  neither  of  the  older  beliefs  supplied. 

It  remains  true  that  China  has  no  religion  worthy  of 
the  name.  The  phenomenon  may  there  be  witnessed, 
which  is  seen  with  certain  differences  also  in  Japan,  that 
several  religions  exist  side  by  side,  all  of  which  are 
supported  by  the  state  and  live  together  without  rivalry, 
and  to  all  of  which  a  man  may  belong  at  the  same 
time.  This  could  not  be  the  case  if  any  of  the  three 
appealed  strongly  to  patriotic  sentiment,  or  gave  full 
expression  to  the  ideals  of  the  nation. 

Books  Recommended. 

In  the  Sacred  Books  of  the  East,  vols,  iii.,  xvi.,  xxvli.,  and  xxviii.  contain 
translations  of  Chinese  Classics,  by  Dr.  Legge.  The  same  writer  has 
published  three  convenient  volumes  of  his  own,  containing :  i.  The 
Life  and  Teachings  of  Confucius.  2.  The  I-ife  and  Works  of  Mencius, 
3.  The  Shi-King. 

Dr.  Legge  has  also  written  a  popular  work,  The  Religions  of  China,  1880. 
Also  The  Notions  of  the  Chinese  concerning  God  and  Spirits ,  1852. 


CHAP.  VIII  China  125 

The  best  account  of  the  old  State  Religion  is  that  of  J.  H.   Plath,  Die 

Religio7i  und  der  Cultus  der  alien  Chineseit,  18^2. 
Reville,  La  Religion  chinoise  (1889).     The  third  volume  of  his  History. 
R.  K.  Douglas,  Confucianism  and  Taoism,  1876.      S.P.C.  K. 
De  Groot,  in  De  la  Saussaye. 
,,       ,,       The  ReligioTis  System  of  China,  vols,  \.-\y.,  1892-1901.     Also  a 

small  book,  The  Religion  of  the  Chinese,  19  lO. 
Beal,  Buddhism  in  China,  1884. 
Murray's  Guide  to  Japan. 
J.  Edkins'  Religioti  in  China,  187S,  ihe  account  of  a  modern  missionary, 

may  be  consulted. 
On  Taoism,  Pfizmaier,  Die  Lbsung  der  Leichnaine  und  Schwerter,  1870  ; 

and  Die  Tao-lehie  von  dem  wahren  Menschen  und  den  Unsterblichen, 

1870.     Julius  Grill,  Lao-tsze's  Buck  vom   hochsten    Wesen   und  voni 

hdchsten  gut.       Tao-tc-King,    1910.     Vols.   xxxix,-xl.  of  the  S.B.E. 

[jive  Taoist  Texts. 
Rt-von,  Le  Shintois/iie,  1907. 


CHAPTER   IX 

THE   RELIGION   OF   ANCIENT   EGYPT 

Egypt  is  a  land  of  still  more  ancient  civilisation  than 
China,  and  its  civilisation  is  of  more  interest  to  us,  since 
from  it  the  nations  of  the  West  obtained  in  part  the  seeds 
of  their  arts  and  sciences.  Even  to  antiquity  everything 
Egyptian  appeared  venerable  and  mysterious,  and  the 
air  of  mystery  is  not  yet  removed  from  the  country  of 
the  Nile.  We  have  discovered  the  sources  of  the  river 
and  have  learned  to  read  the  writing  on  Egyptian 
monuments ;  but  the  sphinx  has  other  riddles  than 
these — riddles  not  yet  solved.  Who  are  the  Egyptians, 
and  where  did  they  come  from  ?  In  ancient  times 
they  were  thought  to  have  descended  from  the  interior 
of  Africa  ;  now  the  opinion  gains  ground  that  they  were 
at  a  very  early  period  connected  with  the  ancestors  of 
the  Semitic  races ;  their  language  is  thought  to  show 
signs  of  this  remote  relationship.  How,  by  whom,  and 
when  were  they  formed  into  a  nation  ?  No  one  can 
tell ;  they  come  before  us  four  thousand  years  before 
Christ,  a  fully  -  formed  nation,  with  an  elaborately 
organised  public  service,  and  with  a  civilisation  both 
broad  and  rich.  And  lastly.  What  is  the  religion  of 
Egypt?  What  are  the  earliest  gods  of  the  land,  and 
in  what  relation  do  the  various  gods  which  were 
worshipped  in  it  stand  to  each  other?  That  question 
cannot  at  the  present  time  be  fully  answered.  Even 
should  it  be  proved,  as  it  appears  likely  to  be,  that 

126 


CHAP.  IX      The  Religion  of  Ancient  Egypt  127 

Egyptian  civilisation  was  derived  originally  from 
Mesopotamia,  much  will  still  be  dark  and  enigmatical 
The  foremost  scholars  in  Egyptology  confess  that  no 
history  of  Egyptian  religion  can  as  yet  be  written. 
Those  who  have  tried  to  sketch  it  differ  from  each 
other  as  widely  as  possible,  some  alleging  monotheism 
as  its  starting-point,  and  some  the  worship  of  animals. 
The  religion  also  comes  into  view  at  the  early  period 
we  have  mentioned  as  a  fully-formed  and  stately  public 
system,  whose  youthful  struggles,  if  it  had  any,  are  long 
past.  What  is  most  peculiar  in  that  religion  is,  that  it 
embraces  elements  which  appear  at  first  sight  to  have 
nothing  whatever  in  common,  nay,  to  be  quite  irre- 
concilable with  each  other.  We  shall  do  well  not 
to  attempt  any  construction  of  Egyptian  religion  as 
a  whole,  but  to  content  ourselves  with  examining  one 
after  another  the  various  elements,  almost  amounting 
to  different  religions,  which  are  found  in  it  side  by 
side.  We  shall  no  doubt  learn  something  of  the  rela- 
tions in  which  they  stood  to  each  other,  but  it  may 
prove  that  we  shall  find  ourselves  unable  to  adopt  any 
of  the  theological  theories  by  which  Egyptian  priests 
or  Greek  philosophers  sought  to  combine  them  in  one 
system. 

History  and  Literature. — The  principal  thing  to  be 
remembered,  in  order  to  understand  the  history  of 
ancient  Egypt,  is  that  the  country  was  divided  into  a 
number  of  provinces  or  nomes,  which,  there  is  every 
reason  to  think,  were  originally  independent  of  each 
other.  Of  these  nomes  there  were  about  twenty  in 
Upper  Egypt — that  is,  in  the  long  gorge  of  the  Nile 
from  Elephantine  in  the  south  to  Memphis  in  the 
north  ;  and  about  the  same  number  in  Lower  Egypt 
— that  is,  in  the  flatter  country  from  Memphis  to  the 
sea.  King  Mena  or  Menes,  founder  of  the  first 
dynasty,  whose  date,  if  he  was  a  historical  character  at 
all,  and  not  a  mythic  founder  like  Minos  of  Crete, 
Manu   of  India,   or   Mannus   of  Germany,   cannot   be 


128  History  of  Religion  part  u 

later  than  3200  B.C.,  is  said  to  have  united  for  the  first 
time  the  two  crowns  of  Upper  and  Lower  Egypt. 
But  though  they  became  united  under  one  ruler,  the  , 
nomes  never  forgot  their  independence,  nor  did  they 
cease  to  maintain  their  separate  existence  as  states 
within  the  empire,  each  having  its  own  army,  its  own 
ruler,  its  own  system  of  taxation,  its  own  worship. 
The  supreme  power  resided  now  in  one  nome  and 
now  in  another.  The  first  two  dynasties  belonged  to 
that  of  Abydos ;  the  succeeding  dynasties,  to  which 
the  earliest  monuments  belong,  so  that  Egypt  here 
begins  its  real  history,  had  their  seat  at  Memphis. 
The  twelfth  dynasty,  which  is  known  to  us,  but  is 
both  preceded  and  followed  by  a  gap  of  half  a 
millennium  in  Egyptian  history,  made  Thebes  the 
capital.  Thebes  was  also  the  seat  of  the  eighteenth 
and  nineteenth  dynasties,  which  came  after  the  foreign 
domination  of  the  shepherd  kings,  and  under  which 
Egypt  was  at  the  summit  of  its  power.  Ramses  II. 
and  his  successors,  the  Pharaohs  of  the  book  of  Genesis, 
belong  to  the  nineteenth  dynasty. 

How  splendid  the  Imperial  Court  of  Egypt  was  at 
various  periods,  the  monuments  tell  us  ;  these  palaces, 
temples,  and  tombs  are  in  proportion  to  a  power  which 
considered  itself  to  have  the  world  at  its  feet,  and  to  be 
the  manifestation  of  the  greatest  gods.  Literature  is  at 
the  same  high  level  of  development  with  the  other  arts, 
and  writing  is  used  for  every  branch  of  the  public 
service.  This,  the  most  ancient  of  the  literatures  of 
the  world,  is  spread  over  the  immense  surfaces  of 
ancient  temples  and  tombs,  and  stored  up  in  masses 
of  papyrus  rolls,  much  of  which  is  still  to  be  explored. 
Our  knowledge  of  ancient  Egypt  and  its  religion  is 
still  in  its  infancy.  The  story  of  the  decipherment 
of  the  various  characters  and  of  the  recovery  of  the 
early  language  of  Egypt  is  one  of  the  most  wonderful 
triumphs  of  scholarship.  Only  one  remark,  however, 
•      do  we  now  make  in  connection  with  Egyptian  writing, 


CHAP.  IX  Egypt  129 

namely,  that  it  illustrates  in  a  singular  manner  the 
conservatism  of  the  Egyptian  people,  a  feature  of  their 
character  which  is  strikingly  manifested  in  their  religion 
also.  The  ancient  Egyptian  did  not  cast  away  an  old 
usage  when  a  new  one,  even  a  very  superior  one,  had 
been  introduced.  Long  after  metals  had  come  into  use, 
he  still  employed  for  various  purposes,  especially  those 
connected  with  religion,  implements  of  stone.  The 
flint  knives  found  in  mummy-cases  are  connected  with 
the  work  of  embalming,  and  show  the  retention  of  an 
archaic  usage.  The  same  is  true  of  the  matter  of 
writing.  The  earliest  Egyptian  writing  was  that  which 
is  called  hieroglyphic,  or  picture-writing.  In  this  system 
what  is  written  down  does  not  represent  the  sounds  of 
words  the  writer  uses,  but  the  ideas  in  his  mind  ;  it  is 
writing  without  words  ;  a  clumsy  system  we  should  say, 
and  presenting  the  greatest  possible  difficulties  to  the 
reader.  At  a  very  early  time,  however,  what  is  called 
hieratic  writing  was  invented,  in  which  the  symbols 
used  represent  not  things  but  sounds,  though  the 
symbols  used  are  adapted  from  those  of  the  earlier 
picture-writing.  It  is  in  this  hieratic  character  that 
the  great  mass  of  Egyptian  literature  is  preserved  to 
us ;  but  here  again  we  find  that  the  new  system  did 
not  banish  the  old  one  from  use.  Especially  in  religious 
inscriptions  and  documents,  the  matter  is  given  both  in 
the  newer  writing  and  in  the  older ;  the  piece  is  written 
twice,  first  in  hieroglyphic,  the  old  and  sacred  form,  and 
then  in  hieratic,  the  new  form,  which  could  be  easily 
read.  In  the  matter  of  different  objects  of  worship,  too, 
it  may  perhaps  be  found  that  the  same  aversion  to 
discard  anything  old  and  sacred  manifests  itself,  the 
same  disposition  rather  to  carry  on  the  old  and  the 
new  together. 


130  History  of  Religion  part  11 


I.  Animal  Worship 

We  begin  with  that  element  in  Egyptian  religion 
which  is  to  our  eyes  least  rational.  In  the  ages  before 
and  after  the  Christian  era,  when  a  number  of  Greek 
and  Latin  writers  tell  us  about  Egypt,  we  find  that 
the  religion  of  the  country  is  described  as  consisting 
mainly  in  the  worship  of  animals.  This  excited  the 
wonder  of  these  writers  in  no  small  degree.  Herodotus 
asserts  that  the  Egyptians  counted  all  animals  sacred, 
and  gives  a  list  of  those  which  were  specially  worshipped. 
The  hippopotamus,  he  says,  is  sacred  at  Papremis,  the 
crocodile  at  Thebes  ;  and  some  animals  are  sacred  all 
over  the  country.  He  has  much  to  tell  of  the  manner 
in  which  the  sacred  animals  are  fed  and  tended,  and 
of  the  honours  paid  to  them  at  their  death.  Lucian 
says  :  "  In  Egypt  the  temple  is  a  building  of  great 
size  and  splendour,  adorned  with  precious  stones  and 
decorated  with  gold  and  with  inscriptions  ;  but  if  you 
go  in  and  look  for  the  god,  you  find  an  ape  or  an  ibis 
or  a  goat  or  a  cat."  The  same  statement  is  made  by 
Clement  of  Alexandria ;  and  Celsus,  the  early  Roman 
assailant  of  Christianity,  speaks  to  the  same  effect. 
Thus  the  popular  religion  of  Egypt,  before  and  after 
the  Christian  era,  had  animals  for  its  principal  objects. 
A  representative  of  the  sacred  species  sat  or  crawled 
or  hopped  in  the  temple,  and  in  that  nome  that  animal 
was  not  eaten.  In  the  nome  in  which  the  cat  was 
sacred  all  cats  were  inviolable ;  any  insult  offered  to 
a  cat  roused  the  whole  population  to  frenzy,  and  one 
who  killed  a  cat,  even  though  he  was  a  stranger  in  the 
place  and  unacquainted  with  its  manners,  forfeited  his 
own  life.  In  the  next  nome  the  cat  was  not  sacred  but 
some  other  animal ;  and  these  local  differences  of  religion 
might  occasion  war  between  one  nome  and  another. 
Juvenal  gives  in  his  fifteenth  satire  an  account  of  a 
religious  war  of  old  standing  between  two  neighbouring 


CHAP.  IX  Egyp^  131 

nomes,  each  of  which  hated  and  insulted  the  animal 
which  was  worshipped  in  the  other.  This  may  explain 
why  it  was  impossible  for  the  Israelites  to  offer  sacrifice 
to  Jehovah  in  Egypt.  They  had  to  go  out  into  the 
wilderness,  off  Egyptian  soil,  before  they  could  sacrifice 
animals  Egypt  held  sacred. 

The  worship  of  a  sacred  animal  in  its  own  nome,  a 
member  of  the  species  dwelling  in  the  temple  and  the 
others  enjoying  respect  and  protection  throughout  that 
nome,  this  is  the  normal  state  of  affairs.  Sometimes 
an  individual  animal  acquires  sacredness  for  Egypt 
generally,  as  the  bull  Apis  of  Memphis,  the  bull  Mnevis 
of  Heliopolis,  or  the  goat  of  Mendes.  These,  though 
originally  local  deities,  might  obtain  a  wider  reverence 
if  the  nome  they  belonged  to  rose  to  greater  power. 
Animals  of  every  size  and  kind  were  worshipped  in 
Egypt.  Besides  the  large  animals  we  have  mentioned, 
the  ape,  the  dog,  the  little  shrew-mouse,  each  had  its 
local  sacredness  ;  also  snakes,  frogs,  and  various  kinds 
of  fishes.  The  beetle  {scat'aU)  can  by  no  means  be  left 
without  mention  ;  and  a  number  of  trees  and  shrubs 
were  also  sacred,^  but,  very  curiously,  not  the  palm. 

It  will  be  observed  that  our  account  of  Egyptian 
animal  worship  is  drawn  from  very  late  sources  and 
applies  to  a  late  period  of  the  religion.  The  religion 
of  the  earlier  ages  of  Egypt  is  of  quite  a  different  kind  ; 
the  kings  and  priests  who  wrote  the  inscriptions  of  the 
monuments  tell  us  nothing  about  animal  worship.  Is 
that  because  such  worship  did  not  flourish  in  their  day  ? 
Not  necessarily.  Perhaps  they  knew  it  well,  but  were 
not  interested  in  it,  or  did  not  wish  to  encourage  it. 
The  Egyptians  certainly  did  not  believe  the  worship  of 
animals  to  have  been  a  late  innovation.  Manetho,  an 
Egyptian  priest  who  wrote  in  the  third  century  B.C., 
says  that  the  worship  of  animals  was  introduced  under 
the  second  king  of  the  second  dynasty.     That  is  as  if 

^  A  very  complete  list  of  the  sacred  animals  and  trees  will  be  found  iu 
Wilkinson's  Ancient  Egyptians^  vol.  iii.  p.  258,  sqq. 


132  History  0/ Religion  part  n 

we  should  say  that  an  old  custom  of  which  we  did  not 
know  the  origin  was  introduced  into  Britain  in  the  days 
of  King  Arthur.  The  priests  of  Manetho's  day  wished 
animal  worship  to  be  considered  a  corruption  of  the 
original  religion  of  their  country,  but  they  could  not 
specify  the  time  at  which  it  had  come  in,  and  placed 
its  origin  in  the  mythical  period  of  history.  The  story 
of  Manetho  therefore  goes  to  prove  that  the  origin  of 
animal  worship  is  anterior  to  written  records. 

But  we  have  other  evidence  to  the  same  effect.  The 
earliest  representations  of  the  deities  of  Egypt  on  the 
monuments  testify  in  a  way  which  can  scarcely  be 
mistaken  that  these  great  beings  had  originally  some 
connection  with  members  of  the  animal  kingdom.  The 
great  gods  of  Egypt  are  designated  on  the  monuments 
in  three  ways.  Their  ultimate  form  is  human,  the  god 
is  a  man  or  woman,  and  as  the  human  figures  of  all 
the  deities  are  drawn  after  one  conventional  male  and 
one  conventional  female  pattern,  a  symbol  is  added 
to  the  head  to  show  which  god  or  goddess  is  meant. 
Hathor  is  a  woman  with  a  cow's  horns  on  her  head,  Seb 
has  a  duck  on  his  head,  and  so  on.  But  an  earlier 
form  of  the  written  symbols  of  the  deities  is  that  which 
represents  them  partly  in  human  and  partly  in  animal 
form.  Horus  appears  as  a  man  with  the  head  of  a 
hawk,  Hathor  as  a  woman  with  the  head  and  horns  of 
a  cow.  Bast  is  a  woman  with  the  head  of  a  cat,  Osiris 
has  the  head  of  a  bull  or  of  an  ibis,  Chnum  of  a  ram, 
Amon  has  the  head  now  of  a  ram  now  of  a  hawk. 
Deities  also  occur  with  human  bodies  and  the  heads  of 
mythical  animals  such  as  the  phcenix.  But  along  with 
these  semi-human,  semi-animal  figures  there  are  found 
still  simpler  symbols  for  the  deities  ;  they  are  drawn  as 
animals.  It  is  only  about  the  twelfth  dynasty  that  the 
change  to  the  higher  form  takes  place,  but  even  after 
the  step  was  made  of  representing  the  gods  as  half- 
human,  the  older  pictures  of  them  were  not  discarded, 
but  placed  side  by  side  with  the  new  ones.     Thus  we 


CHAP.  IX  Egypt  133 

find  on  the  same  stone  two  representations  of  Horus, 
one  of  which  gives  him  as  a  man  with  a  hawk's  head, 
while  the  other  makes  him  simply  a  hawk  ;  and  similar 
double  representations  of  the  other  gods  occur.  If  the 
gods  of  Egypt  were  thus  conceived  and  represented  in 
the  earliest  times,  then  the  animal  worship  described 
by  the  Greek  and  Roman  writers  was  not  the  invention 
of  a  late  age  of  decadence,  but  had  its  roots  at  least 
far  back  in  the  past.  The  early  gods  of  Egypt  were 
animals,  whatever  else,  whatever  more  they  were.  It 
may  be  that  the  animal  worship  of  the  later  and  weaker 
Egyptian  periods  was  a  revival,  such  as  takes  place  in 
weak  periods,  of  a  style  of  worship  which  in  earlier 
centuries  had  to  a  large  extent  disappeared  in  favour  of 
a  more  spiritual  faith.^  Of  this  only  an  Egyptologist 
can  judge,  but  at  any  rate  animal  worship  was  not  a 
new  thing  in  Egypt,  but  a  ver}'  old  thing. 

Theories  Accounting*  for  Animal  Worship. — What 
did  this  worship  mean  ?  and  how  are  we  to  account  for 
it  ?  The  Egyptians  themselves,  and  the  ancient  writers 
who  turned  their  attention  to  Egypt,  accounted  for  it  by 
a  variety  of  theories ;  and  various  theories  are  still  held 
on  the  subject  We  can  only  enumerate  the  principal 
ones,  (i)  The  beasts  were  worshipped  for  their  qualities, 
as  is  said  to  have  been  the  case  in  Peru  before  the  Incas 
(p.  86);  each  was  reverenced  for  that  divine  excellence 
or  virtue  which  appeared  to  be  manifestly  resident  in 
it.  Thus  the  dog  was  worshipped  for  his  watchfulness 
and  faithfulness ;  the  hawk  for  its  darting  flight  through 
the  upper  air,  like  the  flashing  of  the  sunlight  or  of  the 
sun-god  himself;  the  cow  as  a  great  kind  mother;  the 
beetle  for  that  wonderful  procedure  in  the  reproduction 
of  his  kind,  in  which  he  so  strikingly  brings  life  out  of 
decay.  (2)  The  beasts  are  not  worshipped  themselves ; 
they  are  only  the  emblems  of  the  deities  with  whom  they 
are  connected,  and  it  is  the  deity  who  is  worshipped,  not 

^  This  is  held  by  Le  Page  Renouf,  in  his  Hibbert  Lectures,  On  the  Origin 
and  Growth  of  Religion,  as  Illustrated  by  the  Religion  of  Ancient  Egypt. 


134  History  of  Religion  part  n 

the  animal.  This  may  be  quite  true  of  later  practice,  but 
is  by  no  means  a  satisfactory  explanation  of  its  origin  ; 
for  how  was  it  arranged,  and  who  was  it  that  ordained 
at  first,  that  the  jackal  should  be  the  emblem  of  Anubis, 
the  cat  of  Bast,  the  crocodile  of  Sebak,  and  so  on? 
(3)  Various  mythological  and  quasi-historical  accounts 
of  the  origin  of  the  practice  are  given,  such  as  that  men 
long  ago  chose  different  animals  for  their  standards  in 
war,  or  that  some  early  king,  wishing  to  keep  his  sub- 
jects disunited,  ordered  that  each  nome  should  serve  a 
different  animal.  It  is  also  told  as  a  story  of  early 
times  that  the  gods  when  they  walked  on  earth  assumed 
the  forms  of  various  animals  ;  thus  the  gods  are  still  in 
the  animals.  The  gods  hid  in  the  beasts  in  order  to 
be  near  men  and  see  how  they  did.  But  men  found 
them  out  and  worshipped  them  in  the  disguise  they 
had  assumed.  (4)  The  gods  cannot  be  present  in  the 
world  and  cannot  be  satisfactorily  worshipped  unless 
they  have  bodies  to  dwell  in  —  that  is  involved  in 
Egyptian  psychology  ;  and  as  the  gods  would  be  too 
much  alike  if  they  all  occupied  human  bodies,  they 
chose  the  bodies  of  different  animals. 

These  theories  of  animal  worship  are  evidently  later 
inventions,  to  account  for  a  state  of  matters  the  real 
origin  of  which  was  not  known.  Philosophical  priests 
could  not  accommodate  themselves  to  the  animal  worship 
of  the  temples  without  a  doctrine  to  justify  it  to  their 
minds.  But  those  who  resorted  to  such  theories  about 
animal  worship  could  have  nothing  to  do  with  calling 
the  system  into  existence.  We  may  be  sure  that  a 
refined  and  cultivated  people  did  not  take  up  animal 
worship  and  cling  to  it,  in  spite  of  its  repulsive  features, 
with  such  tenacity  as  the  Egyptians  did,  because  of  a 
speculative  idea  of  the  likeness  of  certain  beasts  to 
certain  gods,  or  to  express  pantheistic  views  of  the 
emanations  of  deity  in  animal  forms.  The  system,  in 
fact,  cannot  have  sprung  up  after  the  Egyptians  became 
civilised,   and   could   not   continue   to  exist   among   a 


CHAP.  IX  Egypt  135 

civilised  people,  if  it  was  not  hallowed  by  an  im- 
memorial antiquity.  Only  as  a  mystery,  a  thing  of 
which  the  origin  was  not  known,  could  such  a  worship 
continue  among  such  a  people. 

A  new  explanation  of  Egyptian  animal  worship  has 
been  put  forward  in  recent  times  by  the  Anthropological 
school  of  students  of  religion,^  and  is  rapidly  gaining 
ground.  The  religious  circumstances  of  Egypt  as 
narrated  by  Juvenal  and  Diodorus  have  the  strongest 
resemblance  to  the  totemistic  state  of  society  described 
above  (p.  57,  sqq.).  Here,  as  in  Peru  before  the  Incas, 
or  among  the  North  American  Indians  of  to-day,  we 
have  a  number  of  communities  each  with  its  special 
sacred  animal,  which  it  does  not  eat,  but  reverences 
and  defends.  Other  traces  of  totemistic  arrangements 
may  be  suspected  here  and  there  in  Egyptian  observ- 
ances, but  even  did  the  analogy  extend  no  further 
than  to  the  facts  just  mentioned,  there  would  be  a 
case  for  considering  whether  the  nomes  were  not  first 
peopled  by  a  set  of  totemistic  clans,  who,  even  after 
they  were  united  in  one  people,  preserved  their  early 
separate  traditions.  The  sacred  animals  of  the  nomes 
would  then  be  "  the  totems  of  the  clans  which  first 
settled  in  these  localities."  Later  developments  of 
religion  never  displaced  these  venerable  emblems,  if 
this  be  so,  of  tribal  life.^ 

II.  The  Great  Gods 

A  very  different  set  of  gods  are  those  made  known 
to  us  by  the  monuments  and  books.  It  is  the  principal 
problem  of  this  religion  to  explain  how,  along  with 
the  sacred  animal,  the  cat  or  ibis  or  crocodile,  there 
was  worshipped  in  the  Egyptian  temple  the  celestial 

^  See  A.  Lang,  Myth,  Ritual,  and  Religion,  Second  Edition.  Frazer's 
Totemism.  Most  of  the  modern  Egyptologists  incline  to  the  theory  that 
animal  worship,  though  not  the  only,  was  one  of  the  chief  sources  of 
Egyptian  religion.     Pietschmann  first  took  up  this  ground. 

^  Compare  the  worship  of  animals  in  Babylonia,  pp.  96,  97. 


136  History  of  Religion  part  ii 

beinsT,  the  srod  of  heaven  or  of  the  sun,  whose  nature 
is  Hght,  who  is  righteous  and  good,  and  who  more  and 
more  fills  the  mind  of  the  worshipper  with  noble  adora- 
tion, and  leads  him  towards  the  high  truths  of  theism. 
These  high  gods  of  Egypt  were  represented,  as  we 
have  seen,  from  the  earliest  times  of  which  we  have 
any  knowledge,  under  animal  forms.  As  far  back  as 
we  can  see,  Hathor  is  a  cow,  and  Horus  a  hawk,  and 
Anubis  a  jackal.  Did  beast  worship  spring  by  a 
process  of  degradation  from  the  worship  of  the  high 
gods  ?  We  have  seen  how  difficult  it  is  to  maintain 
such  a  view.  Did  the  higher  worship  then  spring  by 
a  process  of  development  out  of  the  lower?  That  also 
would  be  hard  to  prove,  for  the  high  gods  of  Egypt  are 
not  beasts,  however  magnified  and  spiritualised,  but 
beings  of  a  different  order;  they  are  the  sky,  the  sun, 
the  moon,  the  dawn.  And  as  in  our  opening  chapters 
we  saw  reason  to  believe  that  the  worship  of  the  great 
powers  of  nature  is  an  original  thing  with  early  man, 
and  explains  itself  without  being  derived  from  lower 
forms  of  religion,  so  we  must  judge  with  regard  to 
Egypt  too.  Even  if  some  of  the  great  gods  came 
from  Mesopotamia,  that  helps  us  but  little  to  under- 
stand their  history  after  they  arrived  in  Egypt  In 
this  field  also  we  are  driven  to  recognise  two  religions, 
different  in  nature  and  of  independent  origin,  existing 
side  by  side,  and  seeking  to  come  to  terms  with  each 
other ;  and  the  combination  of  the  two  is  a  process  in 
Egyptian  religion  which  took  place  before  the  period 
of  which  we  have  knowledge.     It  is  prehistoric. 

It  was  formerly  considered  that  the  nature-gods  of 
Egypt  had  very  little  mythology  connected  with  them  ; 
only  one  considerable  story  of  their  doings  was  known ; 
most  of  them  had  no  history  beyond  the  few  phrases 
applied  by  primitive  thought  to  the  great  natural 
phenomena  to  qualify  them  to  be  regarded  as  living 
and  active  beings.  But  as  more  inscriptions  are  read, 
more   divine  myths  are  coming  to  light,  and  further 


CHAP.    IX 


Egypt  137 


discoveries  of  the  same  kind  may  be  still  in  store  for 
us.  These  different  myths,  however,  are  formed  after 
the  same  pattern.  The  great  gods  of  Egypt  are  simple 
beings  and  easy  to  understand,  and  they  were  never 
formed  into  an  organised  system  like  the  gods  of  Greece, 
but  remain  in  separate  dynasties  or  families,  and  are 
very  like  each  other.  Many  of  them  are  sun-gods,  or 
gods  of  the  morning  and  evening,  and  their  stories 
cannot  differ  very  widely  from  each  other,  but  they 
belong  to  different  districts  of  the  country  ;  that  is 
what  constitutes  their  difference  from  each  other,  and 
keeps  them  separate. 

The  Great  Gods  also  are  Local. — The  nature-god  as 
well  as  the  animal-god  was  worshipped  in  his  own 
noma,  where  he  dwelt  in  the  midst  of  his  own 
community  of  worshippers ;  he  was  not  recognised  in 
other  nomes  unless  there  were  special  reasons  for  it. 
But  at  the  earliest  period  of  our  knowledge  of  Egypt 
this  simple  early  arrangement  has  already  undergone 
many  modifications.  Each  nome  has  its  own  special 
deity.  Set  is  the  god  of  Oxyrhynchus,  Neith  of  Sais, 
but  more  gods  than  one  are  worshipped  in  each  nome. 
Generally  there  are  three ;  in  many  places  there  is  an 
ennead,  a  nine  of  gods,  but  the  nine  is  a  round  number ; 
there  might  be  one  or  two  less  or  more.  The  god  of 
a  nome  which  had  risen  to  a  commanding  position 
extended  his  influence  beyond  his  own  nome,  and  came 
to  share  the  temples  of  other  gods,  so  that  he  was  at 
home  in  a  number  of  places,  Ra  is  said  to  have 
fourteen  persons — that  is,  fourteen  views  of  his  person 
have  been  developed  in  so  many  different  districts. 
But  if  one  god  could  thus  be  divided  into  several,  the 
converse  also  took  place ;  two  or  more  gods  were  com- 
bined, by  the  simple  addition  of  their  names  together, 
to  form  a  new  god.  We  have  Ra-harmachis,  Amon-ra, 
Ptah-Sokar-Osiris,  and  some  even  more  elaborately 
compounded  deities. 

Thus  there  was  a  constant  tendency  to  the  production 


138  History  of  Religion  pari  n 

of  new  deities  ;  even  the  attempts  to  combine  existing 
deities  only  add  to  the  number.  No  attempt  in  the 
direction  of  a  system  of  gods  had  any  success ;  local 
deities- could  not  be  suppressed;  the  nomes  retained 
their  separate  deities  and  religious  establishments  to 
the  end.  There  never  was  a  religious  organisation  of 
Egypt  generally  ;  a  priest  could  in  some  cases  pass 
from  the  religion  of  one  nome  to  that  of  another,  but 
there  was  never  a  high  priest  of  Egypt  as  a  whole, 
however  much  a  king  might  wish  to  organise  all  the 
worships  of  the  country  in  one  system.  This  local 
character  of  the  Egyptian  high  gods  was  a  source  of 
weakness  in  these  great  beings,  and  never  ceased  to 
check  their  upward  movement. 

The  temple  of  a  nome  had,  as  a  rule,  three  gods,  and 
these  formed  a  family,  the  chief  god  having  his  consort 
and  the  third  being  their  son.  Of  these  triads  we  may 
mention  some : — 

Amen-Mut-Chonsu       are  the  triad  of  Thebes. 

Ptah-Sechet-Imhotep  „  Memphis. 

Osiris-Isis-Horus  „  Abydos  (Philae). 

Sebak-Hathor-Chonsu  „  Ombos. 

Har  hat-Hathor-Har-sem-ta    „  Edfu. 

The  son  is  the  successor  of  his  father,  and  it  is  his 
destiny  in  turn  to  marry  his  mother  and  so  to  repro- 
duce himself,  that  is  his  own  successor ;  and  so  though 
constantly  dying  he  is  ever  renewed.  The  mother,  not 
being  a  sun-god,  does  not  die.  If  we  remember  that 
the  gods  have  to  do  with  the  sun  these  things  need 
not  shock  us,  nor  need  we  wonder  at  the  statement 
which  is  very  frequently  met  with,  that  a  god  is  self- 
begotten,  or  that  he  produces  his  own  members. 

Mythology.  —  A  few  words  may  be  said  about 
Egyptian  mythology  in  general  before  we  speak  of 
some  of  the  principal  gods.  The  usual  stories  of  the 
beginning  of  things  are  not  wanting,  as  when  the 
principal  god  is  said  to  have  been  born  from  a  primeval 


CHAP.  IX  Egypt  139 

egg,  or  a  whole  family  of  gods  to  be  the  children  of 
Seb  and  Nut ;  Seb,  the  earth,  being  in  Egypt  the  male, 
and  Nut,  heaven,  the  female,  of  these  earliest  parents 
of  all  things.  More  than  one  god,  moreover,  is  held 
to  have  been  an  earthly  king,  and  to  be  the  founder 
of  the  royal  house  which  now  pays  him  homage.  "  The 
days  of  Ra,"  for  example,  are  spoken  of  as  a  golden  age 
in  which  perfect  justice  and  happiness  prevailed.  Many 
stories  too  may  be  found  which  profess  to  furnish  an 
explanation  of  some  feature  of  nature  or  some  institu- 
tion of  society,  to  account  for  the  names  of  places  or  of 
animals,  or  for  the  presence  of  the  five  days  which  were 
added  to  the  twelve  lunar  months  in  Egypt  to  produce 
a  satisfactory  solar  year.  Many  old  stories  of  the  gods 
have  magical  efficacy  when  told  in  certain  situations ; 
one  is  good  against  poison,  but  must  be  told  in  a 
certain  way  to  produce  the  effect.  After  these  stories 
of  the  gods'  early  reign  of  peace,  come  those  relating  to 
less  happy  periods,  when  the  old  god  grew  weak  and 
began  to  have  enemies,  when  gods  and  men  became 
disobedient  to  him,  when  a  war  broke  out  among  the 
gods,  which  is  not  yet  brought  to  an  end  but  breaks  out 
ever  afresh ;  or  when  the  old  god  succumbed  to  his 
enemies,  and  his  successor  had  to  set  out  to  avenge  him. 
In  some  of  these  stories  very  primitive  and  savage  traits 
appear,  which  show  that  they  originated  in  a  rude  state 
of  society.  But  they  are  about  men,  not  about  beasts, 
as  we  might  have  expected  of  Egyptian  mythology, 
and  the  men  are  undoubtedly  solar  heroes  ;  it  is  the 
fortunes  of  the  daily  (not  the  yearly)  sun,  his  splendid 
and  beneficent  reign,  his  decline,  his  conflict  with  the 
powers  of  darkness,  his  decease  and  his  resurrection, 
or  the  vengeance  exacted  on  his  behalf  by  his  successor, 
that  are  spoken  of,  in  connection  now  with  one  god  and 
now  with  another. 

Dynasties  of  Gods.  —  In  the  history  of  Egyptian 
religion  one  set  of  such  gods  succeeds  another  as  the 
prevailing  dynasty,  according  as  the  seat  of  empire  in 


140  History  of  Religion  part  11 

the  country  shifts  to  a  new  nome.  These  rehgious 
changes  could  take  place  without  great  convulsions.  It 
was  only  the  attempt  to  extinguish  old  established 
worships  that  was  fiercely  resisted,  not  the  addition  of 
a  new  god,  even  as  superior  to  those  already  seated  in 
the  temple.  In  the  earliest  times  known  to  us  Ra  of 
Heliopolis  is  the  chief  god  of  Egypt ;  Osiris  of  Thinis 
(Abydos)  is  also  a  great  god,  but  the  most  characteristic 
development  of  Osiris-worship  belongs  to  a  later  period. 
Ptah  of  Memphis  comes  to  the  front  in  the  earliest 
dynasties.  Much  later  is  the  rise  of  Amon  to  the  first 
place,  which  he  held  when  the  Greeks  and  Romans  had 
to  do  with  Egypt.  A  very  short  account  only  can  be 
given  of  the  sets  of  gods  of  which  these  are  the  heads. 

Ra. — Ra  means  "  sun  "  ;  his  seat  is  Heliopolis  or  "  On," 
where  Joseph's  master  Potiphera,  or  "  Priest  of  Ra,"  lived. 
Heliopolis  is  the  "house  of  the  obelisk,"  the  obelisk 
being  a  representation  of  the  sun.  First  a  kindly  old 
king,  he  is  later  a  warrior  ;  he  has  to  contend  with  the 
serpent  Apep,  the  dragon  of  darkness  who  appears 
pierced  by  the  shafts  of  Ra.  But  as  Ra  sinks  in  the 
conflict  he  is  comforted  by  Hathor,  the  goddess  of  the 
western  sky,  and  avenged  by  Horus,  the  ever  young 
and  ever  victorious  winged  sun.^  But  Ra  is  a  god  of 
the  under  as  well  as  the  upper  world.  King  Pi'anchi, 
of  the  twenty-second  dynasty,  entered  into  the  great 
temple  of  Ra  at  Heliopolis  and  penetrated  to  the 
inmost  chamber  of  it,  afterwards  sealing  it  up  again. 
We  are  told  what  he  saw  there.^  He  looked  upon  "  his 
father  Ra,"  and  saw  the  two  boats  intended  for  the 
daily  journey  of  the  god.  Ra  travels  in  his  boat 
through  the  sky,  but  also  at  night  through  the  under- 
world, of  which  also  he  is  lord.     The  progress  of  the 

^  There  are  in  Egyptian  religion  several  gods  called  Horus  ;  this,  the 
oldest  one,  is  fused  with  Ra,  the  first  sun-god,  in  the  double  name  Ra- 
Harmachis,  a  being  to  whom  the  highest  attributes  are  given.  The  symbol 
of  this  god  is  a  recumbent  lion  with  a  man's  head,  the  figure  in  which  also 
the  kings  of  Egypt  are  represented. 

-  See  the  inscription  in  Records  of  the  Past,  ii.  98. 


CHAP.  IX  Egypt  141 

god  of  light  through  the  world  of  darkness  is  a  theme 
which  was  worked  out  later  in  much  detail  in  connection 
with  Osiris ;  but  it  forms  part  of  the  earliest  known 
religious  conceptions  of  the  Egyptians,  and  Ra's  voyage 
through  the  "  Am  Duat "  or  under-world,  is  described 
in  considerable  detail.  Many  figures  accompany  him 
in  this  voyage,  and  many  are  the  obstacles  to  be  over- 
come during  the  successive  hours  of  night  before  he 
reaches  again  the  gates  of  day.  The  souls  of  men  who 
have  died  are  also  led  by  him  through  those  nether 
spaces  ;  by  a  hidden  knowledge,  if  they  have  been  at 
pains  to  possess  themselves  of  it,  they  are  able  to  keep 
close  to  Ra  on  the  perilous  journey.  He  gives  them 
fields  to  cultivate  in  the  plains  beneath,  and  they  are 
made  glad  by  his  appearance  at  the  appointed  hour  in 
the  nights  that  follow. 

Osiris,  the  sun-god  of  Abydos,  is  also  reported  to 
have  been  a  human  being  who  was  exalted  to  divine 
honours.  (The  god  of  the  under-world  and  judge  of 
the  dead,  who  bears  the  same  name,  is  a  different  figure  ; 
of  him  we  shall  speak  afterwards.)  He  is  the  most 
interesting  and  the  best  known  of  the  gods  of  Egypt ;  his 
myth  is  found  at  length  in  Plutarch,  with  the  mystical 
interpretations  proposed  for  it  in  ancient  times  ;  he  is 
also  the  god  in  whom  the  affinity  of  Egyptian  with 
Babylonian  religion  appears  most  clearly  :  cf.  p.  99. 
Born,  according  to  the  myth  we  mentioned  above,  at 
one  birth  with  four  other  gods,  of  the  venerable  parents 
Seb  and  Nut  (p.  139),  he  from  the  first  has  Isis  for  his 
wife  and  sister,  and  his  brother  Set  is  also  born  along 
with  him,  with  whom  he  lives  in  perpetual  hostility. 
Neither  can  quite  overcome  the  other,  and  many  are 
the  incidents  of  their  warfare.  As  a  rule  the  gods  of 
Egypt  are  serene  and  good  beings ;  here  only  dualism 
shows  itself  Osiris  is  the  good  power  both  morally 
and  in  the  sphere  of  outward  nature,  while  Set  is  the 
embodiment  of  all  that  the  Egyptian  regards  as  evil, — 
darkness,  the  desert,  the  hot  south  wind,  sickness,  and 


142  History  of  Religion  part  ii 

red  hair.  It  is  not  the  case  that  Set  was  an  imported 
god  and  belonged  to  Semitic  invaders,  but  these 
invaders  found  him  more  suited  to  their  notions  of  deity 
than  any  other  god  of  Egypt,  and  sought  to  make  him 
supreme,  in  which,  however,  they  could  not  succeed. 
The  story  of  the  dismemberment  of  Osiris  and  of  the 
search  of  Isis  for  his  loved  remains,  which  she  buried 
in  fourteen  different  places  where  she  found  them,  is 
one  which  is  found  connected  with  other  names  in  other 
lands.  Horus  is  the  avenger  of  his  father.  Here  we 
have  this  deity  in  three  stages — Horus  the  child  in  his 
mother's  arms,  Horus  the  avenger,  and  Horus  the 
successor  of  his  father,  the  complete  sun-god. 

This  family  of  gods  is  more  human  and  living  to  us 
than  that  of  Ra  or  than  any  other  set  of  Egyptian 
deities.  It  was  also  more  taken  up  in  other  lands,  when 
the  gods  of  older  peoples  began  to  find  acceptance  in 
the  West.  We  see  with  special  clearness  in  this  case 
the  operation  of  the  principle  according  to  which  the 
contrast  of  light  and  darkness  when  represented  in  the 
gods  passes  into  that  of  moral  good  and  evil,  so  that 
the  god  of  light  becomes  the  great  upholder  of  righteous- 
ness and  dispenser  of  beneficence.  The  good  god  of 
Egyptian  religion,  moreover,  is  accompanied  by  a  goddess 
who  is  somewhat  more  than  the  pale  reflection  of  the 
male  god,  as  most  Egyptian  goddesses  are.  The  inci- 
dents of  the  legend  also  lend  to  the  divine  characters  a 
tragic  depth  in  which  the  prosperous  and  happy  gods 
of  Egypt  do  not  generally  share. 

Ptah  is  the  god  of  Memphis,  and  adjoining  his  temple 
is  the  chapel  of  the  bull  Apis,  who  is  called  the  "  second 
life  of  Ptah."  If  these  two  resided  side  by  side,  some 
theory  of  their  relationship  was  needed,  and  the  bull 
became  the  earthly  representative  of  the  unseen  deity. 
Each  had  a  worship  of  prehistoric  antiquity,  and  it  is 
vain  to  theorise  on  their  original  relation  to  each  other. 
■As  for  Ptah,  his  name  means  "  he  who  forms,"  and  the 
Greeks  called  him  by  the  name  of  their  own  Hephaistos, 


CHAP,  IX  Egypt  143 

the  artificer.  In  later  times  he  came  to  be  identified 
with  the  sun,  and  was  called  the  "honourable,"  "golden," 
"  beautiful,"  and  "  of  comely  face  "  ;  but  earlier  he  seems 
rather  to  have  to  do  with  the  hidden  source  of  the 
world's  heat,  the  elemental  warmth  which  is  at  the 
beginning  of  all  life.  He  also  is,  like  Ra  and  Osiris, 
a  god  of  the  under-world  to  which  men  go  after  death. 
He  is  said  to  open  the  mouth  of  the  dead — that  is  to 
say,  that  he  hears  them  and  judges  them.  But  in  the 
upper-world  too  he  has  to  do  with  justice ;  he  is  called 
the  "  Lord  of  the  Ell,"  a  title  connecting  him  with 
measurements  and  boundaries,  matters  of  the  greatest 
importance  in  Egypt.  His  son  is  Imhotep,  he  who 
comes  in  peace ;  the  Greeks  regarded  this  god  as  a 
physician,  and  called  him  Asclepios.  The  goddess  of 
the  triad  is  Sechet,  who  was  also  worshipped  at  Bubastis 
under  the  name  of  Bast,  and  whose  symbol  is  a  cat, 
Ptah,  it  will  be  seen,  is  a  less  distinct  figure  than  either 
Osiris  or  Ra,  and  he  very  readily  passes  into  combina- 
tions with  other  gods,  Ptah-Sokari  and  Ptah-Sokar- 
Osiris  are  found  much  more  frequently  than  Ptah 
alone. 

These  are  the  chief  gods  of  the  old  kingdom — that  is 
to  say,  of  the  first  six  dynasties.  When  we  come  to  the 
great  twelfth  dynasty,  after  the  gap  in  the  monuments 
which  extends  from  2500-2000  B.C,  we  find  that  these 
gods  have  become  faint  and  new  gods  have  become 
supreme,  namely,  the  local  gods  of  Thebes,  and  of  the 
adjoining  nomes.  Of  these,  Amon,  god  of  Thebes,  has 
the  most  distinguished  history,  though  Chem,  the  agri- 
cultural god  of  Coptos,  and  Munt  of  Hermonthis  were 
originally  as  important,  Amon,  the  hidden,  i.e.  the 
hidden  force  of  nature,  like  Ptah,  is  seldom  found  alone  ; 
he  is  generally  combined  with  some  other  god,  especially 
with  Ra-  The  gods  of  agriculture  bow  their  heads  by 
degrees  before  the  sun-gods  who  tend  to  draw  to  them- 
selves all  Egyptian  worship ;  rude  country  representations 
connected  with  the  idea  of  fertility  being  discredited 


144  History  of  Religion  part  ii 

before   the   religion   of  the   royal    temples   which    was 
directed  mainly  to  the  god  of  light. 

Was  the  Earliest  Religion  Monotheistic  ? — We  have 
mentioned  only  some  of  the  chief  gods  of  Egypt,  out 
of  a  countless  number.  These  are  the  gods  favoured 
by  kings  and  city  priesthoods,  who,  we  cannot  doubt, 
desired  the  religious  elevation  of  the  people.  The  gods 
they  praised  were  of  a  nature  to  promote  that  end.  It 
will  be  granted  that  the  worship  of  the  light-gods  of 
Egyptian  religion  was  fitted  to  lead  the  minds  of  the 
Egyptians  to  theism.  In  illustration  of  this  statement' 
extracts  may  be  here  given  from  hymns,  which  date  as 
we  have  them  from  the  eighteenth  dynasty  1 590  B.C., 
but  which  are  probably  much  older. 

To  HoRUS 
The  gods  recognise  the  universal  lord.  .  .  .  He  judges  the  world 
according  to  his  will ;  heaven  and  earth  are  in  subjection  to  him. 
He  giveth  his  commands  to  men,  to  the  generations  present,  past, 
and  future  ;  to  Egyptians  and  to  strangers.  The  circuit  of  the 
solar  orb  is  under  his  direction  ;  the  winds,  the  waters,  the  wood 
of  the  plants,  and  all  vegetables.  A  god  of  seeds,  he  giveth  all 
herbs  and  the  abundance  of  the  soil.  He  afifordeth  plentifulness, 
and  giveth  it  to  all  the  earth.  All  men  are  in  ecstasy,  all  hearts 
in  sweetness,  all  bosoms  in  joy,  every  one  in  adoration.  Every 
one  glorifieth  his  goodness,  his  tenderness  encircles  our  hearts, 
great  is  his  love  in  all  bosoms. 

To  Tehuti  or  Ptah 

To  him  is  due  the  work  of  the  hands,  the  walking  of  the  feet, 
the  sight  of  the  eyes,  the  hearing  of  the  ears,  the  breathing  of 
the  nostrils,  the  courage  of  the  heart,  the  vigour  of  the  hand, 
activity  in  body  and  in  mouth  of  all  the  gods  and  men,  and  of 
all  living  animals  ;  intelligence  and  speech,  whatever  is  in  the 
heart  and  whatever  is  on  the  tongue. 

To  Ptah-tanen 
O  let  us  give  glory  to  the  god  who  hath  raised  up  the  sky  and 
who  causeth  his  disk  to  float  over  the  bosom  of  Nut,  who  hath 
made  the  gods  and  men  and  all  their  generations,  who  hath  made 
all  lands  and  countries  and  the  great  sea,  in  his  name  of  "  Let-the- 
«arth-be." 


CHAP.  IX  Egypt  145 

To  Amon-ra 

Hail  to  thee,  maker  of  all  beings,  lord  of  law,  father  of  the  gods  ; 
maker  of  men,  creator  of  beasts  ;  lord  of  grains,  making  food  for 
the  beast  of  the  field.  .  .  .  The  one  without  a  second.  .  .  .  King 
alone,  single  among  the  gods  ;  of  many  names,  unknown  is  their 
number. 

There  is  a  beautiful  hymn  addressed  to  the  Nile, 
who  is  also  conceived  as  the  chief  deity  and  the  ruler, 
nourisher,  and  comforter  of  all  creatures.  From  these 
hymns  and  others  like  them,  important  conclusions 
have  been  drawn  as  to  the  nature  of  the  earliest 
Egyptian  religion ;  namely,  that  those  who  wrote 
such  pieces  must  have  been  acquainted  with  the  one 
true  god  and  addressed  him  under  these  various  names, 
so  that  the  true  origin  of  Egyptian  religion  would  be 
a  primitive  monotheism. 

There  are  some  texts  indeed  which  seem  to  point 
even  more  strongly  than  those  cited  to  the  conclusion 
that  Egyptian  religion  started  from  the  belief  in  one 
supreme  deity.  Mr.  Le  Page  Renouf  quotes  along  with 
the  passages  above,  one  from  a  Turin  papyrus,  in 
which  words  are  put  into  the  mouth  of  the  Almighty 
God,  the  self- existent,  who  made  heaven  and  earth, 
the  waters,  the  breaths  of  life,  fire,  the  gods,  men, 
animals,  cattle,  reptiles,  birds,  etc.  This  being  speaks 
as  follows : — 

I  am  the  maker  of  the  heaven  and  the  earth.  ...  It  is  I  who 
have  given  to  all  the  gods  the  soul  which  is  within  them.  When 
I  open  my  eyes  there  is  light,  when  I  close  them  there  is  darkness. 
I  am  Chepera  in  the  morning,  Ra  at  noon.  Turn  in  the  evening. 

M.  de  la  Rouge  maintains  that  Egyptian  religion, 
monotheistic  at  first,  with  a  noble  belief  in  the  unity 
of  the  Supreme  God  and  in  His  attributes  as  the 
Creator  and  Law -giver  of  man,  fell  away  from  that 
position  and  grew  more  and  more  polytheistic.  "  It 
is  more  than  5000  years  since  in  the  valley  of  the 
Nile  the  hymn  began   to   the   unity  of  God  and    the 

K 


146  History  of  Religion  part  ii 

immortality  of  the   soul,  and    we  find   Egypt   arrived 
in  the  last  ages  at  the  most  unbridled  Polytheism." 

The  sublimer  part  of  Egyptian  religion  is  demon- 
strably ancient,  as  Mr.  Le  Page  Renouf  says ;  yet  we 
are  not  shut  up  to  the  conclusion  that  Egyptian  religion 
as  a  whole  is  nothing  but  a  backsliding  and  a  failure. 
If  we  were  obliged  to  regard  that  monotheism  which 
Egypt  had  at  first  but  failed  to   maintain,  as  a  gift 
conferred    from    above,   which   human    powers   proved 
unequal  to  conserve,  then  the  opening  of  the  history 
of  this  religion  would  be  indeed  most  melancholy.     But 
though  monotheism  appeared  in  Egypt  so  early,  there 
is  no  necessity  to  think  that  it  was  not  attained  by 
human  powers.     For  all  we  know,  it  was  not  an  early 
but   a    mature   product   of   thought,   and  was   reached 
after  a  long  development.     It  is  not  impossible  for  the 
human  mind,  starting  from  the  works  of  God,  to    rise 
by  its  own  efforts  to  the  belief  in  His  invisible  power 
and  Godhead.     The  beginnings  of  this  rise  of  thought 
may  be  witnessed  among  savages,  and  the  Egyptians 
in  their  secluded    valley  had  an  opportunity  such   as 
no  other  nation  had,   to   work   out,   as   their   civilisa- 
tion grew  up  from  rude  beginnings  to  its  unequalled 
splendour,  a  noble  view  of  the  Deity  whose  works  they 
adored.     The  god  ruling  from  his  heaven  of  light  over 
the   great   empire  of  a  monarch  who    knew  no  equal 
in  the  world,  possessing  for  his  earthly  abode  a  temple 
of   unsurpassed    magnificence,   uniting    perhaps   under 
'''   sway    districts    long    at    war    and    extending    his 
iniince    over   remote    continents    as    the    armies    of 
Egyporospered,  such  a  being  drew  to  himself  from 
his    wdiipping    retinue    of    priests    and    nobles,   the 
highest  {.ise   and  adoration,   was   exalted    far  above 
all  other  pvers   in   heaven   and  earth,   and   extolled 
even  as  the  \eator  and  Ruler  of  all. 

Monotheism's    thus    approached    in    thought,   but 
-^  only  in  a  prophet  and  anticipatory  way ;  the  circum- 
stances  of   the   cUitry   forbade   its    realisation    as    a 


CHAP.  IX  ^gyp^  147 

general  belief  or  as  a  working  system.  Even  in  the 
highest  flights  of  those  early  thinkers,  when  they  seem 
to  be  speaking  of  a  god  quite  universal  and  supreme, 
it  is  a  local  deity  that  lies  at  the  basis  of  their  specu- 
lations, a  being  who  has  his  temple  in  a  certain  place, 
who  is  symbolised  in  a  certain  animal,  who  has  a 
local  legend  and  a  limited  popular  worship.  These 
are  the  facts  that  clog  the  wings  of  Egyptian  mono- 
theistic speculation  and  bring  it  to  the  earth  again. 
Pure  monotheism  accordingly,  the  belief  in  a  god 
beside  whom  no  other  god  exists,  it  might  be  hard 
to  find  in  Egypt  at  all.  The  last  extract  given  above 
comes  nearest  to  it ;  but  the  last  line  of  that  extract 
cannot  be  called  monotheistic. 

An  attempted  religious  reformation  at  the  end  of 
the  eighteenth  dynasty  may  be  mentioned  here,  as  it 
appears  <-o  have  aimed  at  concentrating  all  the  worship 
of  Egypt  on  a  single  object.  The  object  chosen, 
however,  was  a  material  one, — the  sun's  disk,  Aten, 
— and  though  all  Egyptian  gods  tended  to  become 
sun-gods,  some  sun-gods,  no  doubt,  were  better  than 
others,  and  Aten  was  not  the  finest  of  them.  King 
Chut  -  en  -  Aten,  or  Glory  of  the  Sun-disk,  the  royal 
fanatic  who  made  this  attempt  at  unity,  went  great 
lengths  to  accomplish  his  object,  but  the  attempt  was 
a  failure,  and  was  abandoned  after  his  death  even  by 
the  members  of  his  own  family.  What  Chut-en-Aten 
tried  to  introduce  perhaps  came  nearer  true  mono- 
theism than  anything  that  ever  existed  in  Egypt. 
He  made  war  on  other  gods  and  wished  to  establish 
one  only  god  in  the  land,  but  this  exclusiveness 
the  Egyptians  could  not  understand.  The  Egyptian 
believed  in  many  gods,  and  while  worshipping  one 
god  with  fervour,  by  no  means  denied  the  existence 
or  the  power  of  others  in  other  places.  Even  foreign 
deities  were  in  his  eyes  real  and  potent  beings,  each 
in  his  own  territory.  It  is  henotheism,  not  mono- 
theism, that   we  see  in  this  most  religious  land  ;  the 


148  History  of  Religion  part  n 

worship  of  one  god  at  a  time  while  other  gods  are 
also  believed  to  exist  and  act.  The  one  god  who  is 
before  the  mind  of  the  worshipper  is  exalted  above 
the  rest,  and  spoken  of  as  if  no  other  god  required  to 
be  considered  ;  but  the  worshipper  does  not  dream  as 
yet  of  questioning  the  existence  of  other  gods,  or  feel 
himself  debarred  from  worshipping  them  if  he  should 
visit  their  country 

Syncretism.  —  The  hymns  contain  several  other 
speculative  positions  about  the  gods  (p.  55  sqqi),  and  we 
may  briefly  mention  these.  Syncretism,  as  we  saw,  is 
very  largely  represented  in  Egyptian  thought,  and 
enters,  indeed,  into  its  very  bone  and  marrow.  In 
the  ennead  of  a  city  the  great  gods  may  be  arranged 
together  after  the  fashion  of  a  court  where  one  or  two 
rule  over  the  rest ;  but  in  numberless  passages  we 
find  the  relations  of  gods  adjusted  in  another  way, 
by  making  them  one.  Ra  "comes  as"  Tum,  the  god 
is  known  here  under  one  name  or  aspect  and  there 
under  another.  The  names  of  two  deities  being  added 
together,  a  new  deity  is  produced  ;  and  in  later  times 
these  gods  with  double,  treble,  or  multiple  names  are 
among  the  most  important.  Raharmachis  and  Amon- 
ra  are  national  gods,  and  have  left  much  evidence  of 
themselves. 

It  is  a  little  step  from  syncretism  to  pantheism.  Let 
the  gods  once  lose  the  individual  character  that  keeps 
them  separate  from  each  other,  and  it  is  possible  for  one 
god,  who  grows  strong  and  great  enough,  to  swallow  up 
all  the  rest,  till  they  appear  only  as  his  forms.  In  the 
position  which  they  occupied  in  Egypt  the  various  gods 
could  not  disappear,  their  local  connections  kept  them 
alive ;  but  they  were  so  like  one  another  that  one  of 
them  could  be  regarded  as  a  form  of  another,  and  a 
multitude  of  them  as  forms  of  one.  The  god  who  did 
most  in  the  way  of  swallowing  up  the  rest  was  Ra,  the 
great  sun  god  of  Thebes.     The  Litany  of  Ra^  repre- 

'  Records  of  the  Pasty  viii.  105. 


CHAP.  IX  Egypt  149 

sents  that  god  as  eternal  and  self-begotten,  and  sings 
in  seventy-five  successive  verses  seventy-five  forms 
which  he  assumes  ;  they  are  the  forms  of  the  gods  and 
of  all  the  great  elements  and  parts  of  the  world.  The 
separate  gods  are  reduced  from  the  rank  of  independent 
potentates  to  shapes  of  Ra,  and  thus  a  kind  of  unity  is 
set  up  in  the  populous  Egyptian  Pantheon.  But  Ra  is 
not  strong  enough  to  get  the  better  of  these  shapes,  and 
to  rule  a  sole  monarch  by  his  own  right,  in  his  own  way. 
He  is  the  god,  but  he  is  not  an  independent  god  ;  it  is 
pantheism,  not  theism,  to  which  he  owes  his  exaltation. 
The  one  in  Egypt  cannot  govern  the  many ;  the  pure 
exaltation  of  Ra  as  a  supreme  and  absolute  god  does 
not  prevent  the  worship  of  a  different  being  in  each 
different  town.  The  one  sole  god  is  for  the  priests 
alone,  not  for  the  people ;  and  this  belief  in  him  does 
not  even  lead  to  attempts  to  root  out  the  worship  of 
animals,  or  to  concentrate  the  service  of  the  temples 
on  him  alone.  And  in  the  absence  of  such  attempts  we 
read  the  sentence  condemning  a  religion  which  pro- 
duced most  noble  fruits  of  thought,  to  grow  worse  and 
not  better  as  time  went  on,  and  to  pass  away  without 
bringing  any  permanent  contribution  to  the  development 
of  the  religion  of  the  world. 

Worship.  —  The  Egyptian  temple  was  constructed 
rather  to  afford  the  god  a  splendid  residence  among 
his  people  than  to  accommodate  a  large  congregation  at 
an  act  of  worship.  The  temple  was  the  public  place  of 
the  community,  its  point  of  meeting  (for  the  Egyptian 
town  has  no  market-place),  and  its  fortress  when  attacked 
(for  the  town  is  not  fortified).  But  while  the  courts  of 
the  temple  were  open  to  the  people,  there  was  a  holy 
place  which  only  the  priests  might  enter,  where  the 
sacred  ark,  the  symbol  of  the  god,  remained,  and  where 
sacrifices  were  offered.  The  images  about  the  temple 
were  not  placed  there  to  be  worshipped,  but  were  votive 
offerings  meant  to  provide  the  god  with  a  body  which 
he  might  enter  when  he  chose.     The  obelisk  is  such  a 


i^o  History  of  Religion  part  ii 

symbol  or  incorporation  of  the  sun.     On  certain  days 
the  sacred  objects  and  animals  were  taken  in  proces- 
sion through  the  temple  grounds,  or  made  voyages  on 
the  lake  belonging  to  the  temple,  or  were  even  taken 
through  the  nome  among  the  fields  and  dwellings  of 
their  people  ;    and  on  these  occasions  representations 
took  place  symbolising  the  principal  events  in  the  history 
of  the  god.     It  was  thus  that  the  private  individual  came 
to  know  the  god  ;  it  was  a  great  festival  and  an  occasion 
of  the  utmost  joy  when  the  divine  protectors  and  bene- 
factors of  the  nome,  who  generally  remained   in  their 
splendid  retirement,  came  forth  to  mingle  for  a  brief 
space  with  the  faithful  community.     The  worship  of  the 
gods  was  in  Egypt,  as   in  every  nation  of  the  ancient 
world,  a  matter  of  state,  not  of  individual  concern.     It 
is  the  chief  branch  of  the  public  service ;  the  state  is 
under  the  direct  rule  of  the  gods ;  never  was  there  a 
more  absolute  theocracy.     The  king  is  a  child  of  the 

god, a  conception  often  treated  in  the  most  material 

way, — and    being    thus    of    more    than    human    race, 
becomes  himself  the  object*  of  worship,  and  even  offers 
sacrifice  to  himself.     It  is  one  of  the  king's  chief  cares 
to    provide  a  stately  dwelling    for  the  god  ;    the    king 
himself  offers  sacrifice  on  the  most  important  occasions. 
The  god  in  his  sacred  ark  goes  with  his  people  when 
they  are  at  war  and  fights  along  with  them,  so  that  every 
war  is  a  holy  war.     The  priests  are  public  officials,  and 
often  exercise  immense  influence.     The  king  institutes 
them  into  their  functions ;  they  are  exempt,  as  we  may 
read  in  Genesis,  from  public  burdens ;    every  function 
involving  learning  or  art  is  in  their  hands.     Framed  in 
such  institutions  religion  is  not  likely  to  have  any  free 
growth;    the  time  is  far  distant  here  when  men  will 
form  voluntary  associations  of  their  own  for  spiritual 
ends.     Yet,  no  doubt,  the  lay  Egyptian  had   a  private 
religion  of  his  own  as  well  as  his  share  in  the  great  public 
acts  he  witnessed.      Though  the   gods   of  Egypt  are 
nearly  all  good,  the  evil  power  Set  was  much  worshipped, 


CHAP.  IX  Egypt  151 

and  would  be  approached  in  private  as  well  as  in  the 
public  acts  depicted  on  the  monuments,  by  all  who  had 
anything  to  fear  from  him — that  is  to  say,  by  all.  Every 
one  had  to  treat  with  kindness  and  respect  the  animal 
species  sacred  in  his  nome,  and  other  sacred  animals. 
The  belief  in  magic  was  strong ;  hidden  powers  had  to 
be  reckoned  with  on  manifold  occasions  ;  sickness  was 
imputed  to  the  agency  of  evil  spirits,  and  treated  by 
exorcism,  by  persons  duly  trained  and  learned  in  such 
arts.  Lucky  and  unlucky  days,  and  days  suitable  or  un- 
suitable for  particular  undertakings,  filled  the  calendar; 
the  belief  in  amulets  and  charms  was  universal.  Such 
things  we  expect  to  find  among  the  people,  even  where 
religious  thought  has  risen  highest. 

The  Doctrine  of  the  other  Life 

Most  of  our  knowledge  about  ancient  Egypt  is  drawn 
from  the  tombs.  No  other  nation  ever  bestowed  so 
much  care  on  the  dead  as  the  Egyptians  did,  nor 
thought  of  the  other  world  so  much.  The  living  had 
to  prepare  for  his  further  existence  after  death,  and  the 
dead  claimed  from  his  successors  on  earth  elaborate 
offices  of  piety.  It  is  in  this  part  of  the  religion  that 
there  is  most  growth,  and  this  part  of  it  in  its  ultimate 
form  is  best  known. 

I.  Treatment  of  the  Dead. — The  doctrine  of  the 
other  world  takes  its  rise  with  the  Egyptians  in  the 
belief  common  to  all  early  races,  which  was  described 
above  (p.  33,  sqq^.  The  spirit  still  lives  when  the  body 
dies,  and  it  comes  back  to  the  body,  and  is  affected  by 
the  treatment  the  body  receives.  To  care  for  the  dead 
is  the  first  duty  of  the  living,  and  a  man  must  marry  in 
order  to  have  offspring  who  will  pay  him  the  necessary 
attention  after  his  death.  Various  things  are  buried 
with  the  corpse  for  the  use  of  the  spirit,  and  offerings 
are  made  to  it  from  time  to  time  afterwards.  This  is 
on  more  than  the   common    primitive  belief,  but  the 


152  History  of  Religion  part  11 

Egyptians  carried  it  out  more  fully  in  practice  than  any 
other  people.  They  sought  to  make  the  body  incor- 
ruptible, embalming  it  and  restoring  to  it  all  its  organs, 
so  that  the  spirit  should  be  able  to  discharge  every 
function  of  life.  They  placed  the  mummy  if  possible  in 
such  a  situation  that  it  should  never  be  disturbed  to  the 
end  of  time  ;  the  grave  they  called  an  eternal  dwelling. 
They  even  instituted  endowments  to  secure  due  offer- 
ings to  the  dead  in  all  coming  time. 

Cultivated  as  this  part  of  religion  was  in  Egypt,  it 
could  not  fail  to  assume  a  special  character.  For  one 
thing,  there  is  a  variety  of  names  for  what  survives  of 
man  after  death  ;  we  hear  of  his  heart,  his  soul,  his 
shade,  his  luminosity;  and  in  the  later  doctrine  these 
are  all  combined  and  made  parts  of  one  theory ;  all  the 
different  parts  of  the  man  have  to  come  together  again 
after  their  dispersion  at  death  before  his  person  is 
complete.  The  principal  term,  however,  is  the  "  ka," 
image,  or,  as  we  say,  genius,  of  the  man,  a  non-substantial 
double  of  him  which  has  journeys  and  adventures  to 
make,  and  to  which  the  offerings  are  addressed.  The 
"ka"  needs  food,  and  regular  gifts  are  made  to  it  of  all 
it  can  require ;  it  needs  guidance  and  instruction,  and 
these  can  be  conveyed  to  it  by  pictures  and  writings 
on  the  walls  of  the  tomb  or  in  the  mummy-case;  even 
its  amusement  and  its  need  of  society  and  of  ministra- 
tion can  be  to  some  extent  met  in  this  way.  It  is  not 
peculiar  to  Egypt  that  the  advantages  of  wealth  and 
rank  are  continued  after  death,  and  that  the  rich  can 
do  much  more,  or  cause  much  more  to  be  done  for  his 
eternal  welfare,  than  the  poor.  The  king's  mummy 
lies  in  a  pyramid,  where  it  will  never  be  moved  ;  that 
of  the  noble  in  a  rock  -  tomb  or  a  stately  edifice  or 
"mastaba";  the  poor  man  has  to  be  content  with  an 
inferior  kind  of  embalming,  and  a  tomb  of  tiles  if  he 
gets  any  at  all ;  and  no  priest  can  be  retained  to  pray 
for  him. 

2.  The  Spirit  in  the  Under-world. — Before  history 


CHAP.   IX 


Egypt  153 


opens,  this  common  belief  and  practice  in  regard  to  the 
dead  had  come  to  be  combined  in  Egypt  with  the 
worship  of  a  solar  deity  ;  a  step  of  immense  importance, 
which  added  immeasurably  to  the  pathos  and  the  moral 
power  of  this  kind  of  religion. 
Milton  says  in  Lycidas — 

So  sinks  the  daystar  in  the  ocean  bed  ; 

And  yet  anon  repairs  his  drooping  head, 

And  tricks  his  beams,  and  with  new-spangled  ore 

Flames  in  the  forehead  of  the  morning  sky  ; 

So  Lycidas  sank  low,  but  mounted  high. 

But  what  to  Milton  was  a  poetic  imagination  was  to  the 
early  Egyptian  a  serious  belief  If  the  sun  was  his  god, 
he  did  not  say  like  Wordsworth  in  his  early  period — 

Our  fate  how  different  from  thine,  blest  star,  in  this, 
That  no  to-morrow  shall  our  beams  restore, 

but  he  was  convinced  that  the  history  of  his  god,  who 
sank  under  the  Western  horizon,  and  after  a  period  of 
darkness  came  back  again  to  light  and  triumph,  was 
an  undoubted  indication  of  what  he  himself  had  to  look 
for  after  death.  The  mummy  was  carried  across  the 
Nile  and  deposited  in  the  west  land,  which  is  also  the 
under-world,  to  share  in  the  repose  and  in  the  further 
progress  of  the  dead.  As  the  jackal  pervades  that 
region,  the  dead  is  left  to  the  care  of  Anubis,  the  jackal- 
headed  deity,  who  opens  paths  to  him  for  further  travel, 
and  leads  him  into  the  presence  of  the  gods.  The 
under-world  is  elaborately  portioned  out  into  various 
parts  and  scenes,  and  manifold  are  the  shapes  of  evil 
and  mischief  with  which  it  is  peopled.  On  the  other 
hand,  it  contains  abundance  of  blessings,  which  the 
departed  may  secure  if  the  proper  means  have  been 
taken  by  himself  and  by  his  friends  surviving  him. 
The  earthly  life  is  there  repeated  with  all  its  occupations 
and  enjoyments,  but  free  from  fear  and  from  decay. 
The  doctrine  of  the  dead  accompanying  the  sun-god 


154  History  of  Religion  part  ii 

to  the  under-world,  and  living  under  his  protection,  is 
very  old  in  Egypt ;  we  saw  it  in  an  early  form  in  con- 
nection with  the  god  Ra.  It  was  in  connection  with 
Osiris,  however,  that  it  attained  its  widest  diffusion  ; 
to  the  whole  Egyptian  people  Osiris  was  the  lord  of 
the  world  below,  with  whom  the  departed  were.  The 
identification  of  the  departed  with  Osiris  was  thorough 
and  complete  ;  he  becomes  Osiris,  takes  the  name  of  the 
deity,  and  is  known  in  the  inscriptions  as  "  Osiris  N.  N." 
Isis  is  his  sister,  Horus  his  defender,  Anubis  his  herald 
and  guide,  and  having  shared  the  god's  eclipse,  he  is  also 
to  share  his  triumph  and  revival. 

3.  The  Book  of  the  Dead,  the  most  famous  relic  of 
Egyptian  literature,  is  a  collection  of  pieces  many  of 
which  are  very  ancient,  bearing  on  the  passage  of  the 
soul  through  the  under-world.  The  book  has  also  been 
called  the  Funeral  Ritual ;  a  better  translation  of  the 
title  is,  "  Book  of  Coming  out  from  the  Day."  The 
earthly  life  is  the  day  from  which  the  deceased  comes 
forth  into  the  larger  existence  of  the  world  beyond. 
The  book  (or  such  parts  of  it  as  may  be  used  in  each 
case)  is  the  soul's  vade  inecum  for  the  under-world,  and 
contains  the  forms  the  soul  must  have  at  command  in 
order  to  ward  off  all  the  dangers  of  that  region,  and  to 
secure  an  easy  and  happy  passage  through  it.  How 
the  person  is  to  be  reconstructed,  the  different  parts 
coming  back  to  be  built  up  again  in  one,  how  he  is 
to  know  the  spirits  he  meets,  how  he  is  to  get  the 
gates  opened  for  him, — such  are  the  subjects  of  various 
chapters  ;  and  the  soul's  success  in  its  passage  depends 
on  its  knowledge  of  these.  The  words  they  contain 
are  not  merely  information,  they  have  magic  power  to 
smooth  away  obstacles  and  to  open  doors.  Hence  it  is 
important  for  a  man  to  have  learned  them  when  alive, 
and,  to  assist  his  memory,  a  few  chapters  are  written  on 
papyrus  or  linen,  and  the  rolls  placed  with  the  mummy 
in  its  case,  or  they  are  written  on  the  walls  of  the  tomb. 
No   other    Egyptian    work,   in   consequence,   has   been 


CHAP.  IX  Egypt  155 

preserved  in  so  many  copies,  but  one  roll  or  set  of 
inscriptions  contains  one  set  of  chapters  and  another 
another  set. 

Does  the  fate  of  the  individual  after  death  depend 
then  entirely  on  magic  ;  is  it  a  question  of  how  many 
of  these  formulae  he  is  able  to  remember,  or  how  many 
his  relatives  have  got  written  out  for  him  ?  Do  no 
doubts  intrude  on  his  mind  lest,  even  if  he  has  all  the 
requisite  knowledge  at  command,  he  himself  should 
be  found  unworthy  to  live  with  the  immortals.?  For 
the  most  part  the  Book  of  the  Dead  stands  on  the  earlier 
position  at  which  man  never  thinks  of  doubting  the  favour 
of  his  god,  and  trusts  to  overcome  what  is  hostile  by 
having  his  magic  ready,  not  by  having  his  heart  pure. 
But  in  several  chapters  a  deeper  tone  is  heard.  There 
is  a  form  for  having  the  stain  rubbed  away  from  the 
heart  of  the  Osiris,  and  if  there  are  abundant  directions 
for  outward  purification,  there  are  also  directions  for 
having  his  sins  forgiven.  In  the  great  125th  chapter  the 
deceased  enters  the  Hall  of  the  two  Truths,  and  is 
separated  from  his  sins  after  he  has  seen  the  faces  of 
the  gods.  Here  he  stands  before  forty-  two  judges 
(compare  the  number  of  the  nomes  of  Egypt)  styled 
Lords  of  Truth,  each  of  whom  is  there  to  judge  of  a 
particular  sin,  and  to  each  he  has  to  profess  that  he  did 
not  when  on  earth  commit  that  sin.  I  have  not  stolen, 
he  has  to  say  ;  I  have  not  played  the  hypocrite,  I  have 
not  stolen  the  things  of  the  gods,  I  have  not  made 
conspiracies,  I  have  not  blasphemed,  I  have  not  clipped 
the  skins  of  the  sacred  beasts,  I  have  not  injured  the 
gods,  I  have  not  calumniated  the  slave  to  his  master ; 
and  so  on.  The  line  is  not  yet  clearly  drawn  between 
moral  and  ritual  or  conventional  offences  ;  and  moral 
duty  is  expressed  in  a  negative  form,  and  appears  as 
a  shackle,  not  as  an  inspiration.  Yet  the  very  great 
advance  has  been  made  here,  that  divine  law  watches 
not  only  over  specially  religious  matters  but  over  social 
life,  and  even  over  the  thoughts  of  the  individual  heart. 


156  History  of  Religion  part  11 

The  gods  enjoin  on  a  man  not  only  to  offer  sacrifice  and 
to  respect  the  sacred  beasts,  but  also  to  do  his  duty  as 
a  citizen  and  as  a  neighbour,  and  to  keep  his  own  lips 
unpolluted  and  his  own  heart  pure.  It  is  to  the  same 
effect  when  we  find  that  a  man's  justification  depends 
on  the  state  of  his  heart  at  death.  His  heart  is  weighed 
against  the  truth,  and  if  it  is  found  defective,  he  cannot 
live  again;  if  it  turns  out  well,  then  he  is  justified  and 
goes  to  the  fields  of  Aalu,  the  place  of  the  blessed  of 
Osiris. 


Conclusion 

.  This  doctrine  of  the  life  to  come,  like  the  theistic 
doctrine  the  Egyptians  at  one  time  attained,  might 
have  seemed  destined  to  lead  to  a  pure  spiritual  faith, 
from  which  superstition  should  have  disappeared.  But 
in  neither  case  is  that  result  attained.  The  later 
history  of  Egyptian  religion  is  that  of  the  increase 
of  magic,  and  of  the  rise  of  a  priestly  class  absorbing 
to  itself,  as  the  older  priests  who  were  closely  con- 
nected with  the  civil  life  of  the  nation  had  never  done, 
all  the  functions  of  religion.  Doctrine  grows  more 
pantheistic  and  more  recondite,  mysteries  and  symbols 
are  multiplied,  all  to  the  increase  of  the  influence  of 
the  priesthood,  and  to  the  infinite  exercise  of  ingenuity 
in  coming  times.  Popular  religion,  on  the  other  hand, 
comes  to  be  more  taken  up  with  such  matters  as 
charms  and  amulets  and  horoscopes ;  and  while  morals 
did  not  decline  from  the  high  level  they  had  gained 
from  the  reign  of  the  gods  of  light,  the  spirit  of  the 
nation  lost  vigour  under  the  growth  of  religiosity  at 
the  expense  of  patriotism,  and  healthy  reform  grew 
more  and  more  impossible.  What  of  the  religion  of 
Egypt  lived  on  in  other  lands  which  felt  her  influence, 
it  is  hard  to  say.  The  religious  art  of  Egypt,  and  with 
it  no  doubt  some  tincture  of  the  ideas  it  embodied, 


CHAP.  IX  Egypt  157 

undoubtedly  went  northwards  to  Phenicia  ;  and  Greece 
owed  to  Phenicia,  as  we  shall  see,  many  a  suggestion 
in  religious  matters.  Long  before  Isis  and  Serapis 
were  introduced  in  Rome  in  their  own  persons,  the 
legend  of  Osiris  had  flourished  in  Greece  under  new 
names,  and  the  Greek  doctrine  of  the  life  to  come, 
taught  in  the  mysteries,  has  suggested  to  some  scholars 
an  Egyptian  origin.  To  the  Greeks  and  Romans  this 
religion  afforded  an  infinity  of  puzzles  and  mysteries  ; 
to  the  modern  world  it  affords  the  greatest  example  of 
a  religion  the  early  promise  of  which  was  not  fulfilled, 
the  splendid  moral  aspirations  of  which  were  stifled 
amid  the  superstitions  they  were  too  weak  to  conquer. 

Books  Recommended 

For  general  information  Wilkinson's  Egyptians. 

E.  A.  W.  Budge,  History  oj  Egypt,  vols,  i.-viii.,  1902-03. 

,,  ,,        The  Mummy  ;  chapters  on  Egyptian  funeral  archseology, 

Cambridge,  1893. 
,,  ,,        The   Book    of  the   Dead,    English   Translation   of    the 

Theban  Recension,  3  vols.;  1910. 
Flinders  Petrie,  A  History  of  Egypt. 

,,  ,,       in  Oxford  Proceedings,  vol.  i.  p.  184,  sqq. 

The  Histories  of  Antiquity  of  Duncker,  Maspero,  and  especially  Ed.  Meyer. 
Erman,  Life  in  Ancient  Egypt,  1894. 

Maspero,  Alamial  of  Egyptian  Archceology,  Second  Edition,  1895. 
Renoufs  Hibbert  Lectures. 

Tiele,  History  of  the  Egyptian  Religion,  translated  by  Ballingal. 
Wiedemann,  Agyptische  Geschichte,   1S84-88;    "Die    Religion  der   alten 

Aegyptier,"    1890;    also   "Egyptian   Religion,"  in    Hastings'    Bible 

Dictionary,  vol.  y. 
A.  O.  Lange,  "Die  Agypter "  in  De  la  Saussaye.     Records  of  the  Past, 

First   Series   (1873-81),    vols,    ii.,    iv.,    vi. ,    viii.,    x.,    xii.      Second 

Series,  1888-92,  vols,  ii.-vi. 
Benson  and  Gourlay,  The  Temple  of  Mut  in  Asher,  1899. 
Naville,  The  Old  Egyptian  Faith,  translated  by  Colin  Campbell,  1909. 
Colin  Campbell,  Two  Theban  Queens,  1909.     A  study  of  the  inscriptions 

in  two  royal  tombs. 


PART    III 
THE    SEMITIC  GROUP 


CHAPTER   X 

THE   SEMITIC   RELIGION 

As  used  by  the  modern  scholar,  the  term  Semites  or 
Semitic  races  includes  the  Arabs,  the  Hebrews,  the 
Canaanites  and  Phenicians,  the  Syrians  or  Arameans, 
the  Babylonians  and  the  Assyrians.  This  enumeration 
differs  from  that  of  the  tenth  chapter  of  Genesis,  where 
the  children  of  Shem  include  Elam,  or  the  dwellers  in 
Susiana,  and  Lud  or  the  Lydians,  while  the  tribes 
who  dwelt  in  Canaan  before  the  Hebrews  are  placed 
in  another  and  a  lower  division  of  the  human  family. 
The  principle  of  the  enumeration  in  Genesis  is  prob- 
ably that  of  geographical  neighbourhood ;  the  modern 
principle  is  that  of  linguistic  affinity.  The  peoples 
mentioned  above  spoke,  or  still  speak,  languages  which 
belong  to  the  same  family  of  human  speech.  The 
inference  from  affinity  of  language  to  affinity  of  blood 
is  in  this  case  a  strong  one,  so  that  the  peoples  using 
the  Semitic  tongues  are  considered  to  be  of  the  same 
race.  To  the  question,  where  the  cradle  of  the  Semitic 
race  is  to  be  sought,  most  scholars  now  answer  that 
we  must  seek  it  in  Arabia.  From  this  isolated  land 
the  Semitic  dispersion  spread  in  every  direction,  till 
Semitic  language  and  customs  filled  the  earth  from 
the  south  of  Arabia  to  the  north  of  Syria,  and  from 
the  mountains  of  Iran  to  the  Mediterranean,  and  far 
along  the  northern  shores  of  Africa  ;  of  Babylonia  and 
Assyria,  where  Semitic  culture  and  religion  assumed  at 
the  dawn  of  human  history  a  very  special  and  peculiar 

L  161 


1 62  History  of  Religion  part  hi 

form,  we  have  already  spoken.  We  have  now  to  speak 
of  Semitic  religion  as  found  in  the  lands  bordering 
on  the  eastern  Mediterranean  in  a  more  original  form. 
The  Semitic  peoples  outside  of  Babylonia  founded  no 
lasting  empires,  and  showed  no  great  aptitude  for  art 
or  for  literary  style ;  but,  in  point  of  religion,  they 
communicated  to  the  world  impulses  of  immeasurable 
force,  which  will  act  powerfully  on  the  world  as  long 
as  the  Prophet  is  named  or  Christ  preached. 

It  is  possible  to  define  to  a  certain  extent  the  typical 
religion  of  the  Semites.  The  Burnett  lectures  of  the 
late  lamented  Professor  Robertson  Smith  ^  profess  to  do 
this ;  a  book  in  which  great  learning  and  bold  specula- 
tion are  remarkably  combined,  and  which  forms  one  of 
the  most  important  contributions  to  the  early  history, 
not  of  Semitic  religion  only,  but  of  early  religion  in 
general.  The  writer  was  keenly  interested  in  the  study 
of  prehistoric  man  and  of  primitive  institutions,  and 
much  of  his  book  refers  to  an  earlier  period  in  the 
growth  of  religion  than  that  of  the  formation  of  the 
Semitic  type.  On  the  question  of  the  specific  character 
of  Semitic  as  distinguished  from  other  religions,  it  is 
one  of  our  principal  authorities. 

The  Semitic  races  differ  from  the  Indo-European, 
with  whom  alone  we  need  compare  them,  in  their 
greater  intensity  of  disposition  and  a  corresponding 
poverty  of  imagination.  The  Semite  has  a  smaller 
range  of  ideas,  but  he  applies  them  more  practically 
and  more  thoroughly.  He  has,  indeed,  an  intensely 
practical  turn,  and  does  not  touch  philosophy  except 
under  an  irresistible  pressure  of  great  practical  ideas ; 
while  for  plastic  art  he  has  no  native  inclination. 
From  this  it  follows  that  the  religious  views  he 
entertains  appear  to  him  less  as  ideas  than  as  facts, 
which  must  be  reckoned  with  to  their  full  extent  as 
other  common  facts  of  life  must,  and  from  which  there 

^  Lechcres  on  the  Religion  of  tke  SemiUs.     First  Series.     The  Funda- 
mental Institutions,  18S9. 


CHAP.  X  The  Semitic  Religion  163 

is  no  escape.  His  religious  convictions,  therefore,  are 
apt  to  be  carried  out  to  their  utmost  extent,  even  at 
the  cost  of  great  and  painful  sacrifices.  Religion 
admits  with  the  Semite  of  less  compromise,  and  is 
less  affected  by  fancy,  than  with  the  Aryan  ;  it  is,  in 
fact,  a  more  practical  matter.  The  result  proves  to 
be  that  the  Semitic  mind  brings  religious  ideas  to 
bear  on  life  and  conduct  with  the  greatest  possible 
force;  the  substance  is  more,  the  form  less,  than  is 
the  case  elsewhere. 

When  we  ask  for  the  common  type  of  working  Semitic 
religion,  where  are  we  to  look  for  it  ?  Not  in  Babylonia  ; 
the  characteristic  Babylonian  religion  is  Semitic,  but 
late  Semitic  ;  it  has  received  the  impress  of  high  civilisa- 
tion and  of  empire.  Nor  need  we  look  for  it  in  the 
town  life  of  Phenicia.  It  is  in  the  seclusion  of  the  Arabian 
peninsula  that  we  find  it,  in  the  district,  as  we  saw,  now 
regarded  as  the  cradle  of  the  Semitic  race,  where  life 
continues  to  this  day  little  changed  from  what  it  was  before 
the  days  of  Abraham.  There  the  type  of  society  still 
exists  with  which  scholars  like  Wellhausen  and  Smith  I 
consider  the  earliest  Semitic  religion  to  be  connected.' 
It  is  a  society  of  nomad  clans,  which  own  no  allegiance 
to  any  central  authority,  which  have  no  king  and  do  not 
yet  form  a  nation.  This  is  a  stage  of  social  growth 
which  in  every  ancient  people  precedes  the  rise  of  the 
nation  and  of  monarchy.  The  Hebrews  are  rising  out 
of  this  stage  when  we  first  see  them.  Their  neighbours 
the  Moabites  and  Canaanites  have  already  passed  beyond 
it.  But  all  these  peoples  alike  have  their  root  in  a 
state  of  society  when  there  was  no  large  and  orderly 
community,  but  only  a  multitude  of  small  and  restless 
tribes,  when  there  was  no  written  law,  but  only  custom, 
and  when  there  was  no  central  authority  to  execute 
justice,  but  it  was  left  to  a  man's  fellow-clansmen  to 
avenge  his  murder. 

Now   the   religion   of  the   clan,   the  ideas  of  which 
determine  the  character  of  later  Semitic  systems,  may 


164  History  of  Religion  part  hi 

be  briefly  described  as  follows.  Each  clan  has  its  own 
god,  perhaps  he  was  originally  an  animal,  at  any  rate 
he  is  the  father  or  ancestor  of  the  clan,  he  is  of  the 
same  blood  with  them,  he  belongs  to  them  and  to  no 
other  clan.  So  far  the  assertion  that  the  Semites  are 
i  naturally  monotheists  is  true  ;  but  the  same  is  true  of 
'  all  totemistic  or  clannish  communities.  A  man  is  born 
into  a  community  with  such  a  divine  head,  and  the 
worship  of  that  god  is  the  only  one  possible  to  him. 
Should  he  be  expelled  from  his  clan  he  is  driven  away 
from  his  god,  and  he  cannot  obtain  access  into  another 
clan  except  by  a  formal  adoption  as  a  stranger  client. 
The  link,  on  the  other  hand  between  the  god  and  his 
clansmen  is  of  the  strongest.  He  joins  in  all  their 
enterprises,  after  being  consulted  on  the  subject,  and 
having  a  sacrifice  offered  to  him,  which  renews  the 
union  of  the  clansmen  to  him  and  to  each  other.  Their 
wars  are  his  wars  ;  when  any  of  them  is  injured  or  slain 
he  joins  in  their  necessary  acts  of  retaliation  ;  it  is  a 
religious  duty  for  each  of  them  to  be  faithful  to  the 
others,  and  to  keep  up  the  tribal  customs,  of  which  the 
god  approves. 

Thus  the  Semites  have  as  many  gods  as  they  have 
clans ;  and  these  gods  do  not  greatly  differ  from  each 
other.  As  long,  moreover,  as  the  clans  are  at  constant 
feud,  no  single  god  can  grow  very  great.  It  is  only 
when  one  clan  conquers  others,  that  a  king-god  can 
arise  to  rule  over  all  alike  as  a  monarch  rules  over 
his  nobles  and  their  provinces.  But  in  this  type  of 
deity  the  genius  of  Semitic  religion  is  already  expressed. 
The  god  of  the  Semite  is  not  a  nature-power  who  bears 
the  same  aspect  to  all  men,  but  a  member  of  a  particular 
clan,  a  person  to  whom  the  clansman  occupies  the  same 
position  of  natural  subordination  as  he  does  to  his 
father  or  his  chief  The  god  takes  his  name  not  from 
a  part  of  nature  but  from  a  human  relationship.  He  is 
"  Baal,"  master  or  owner,  he  is  "  Adon,"  lord ;  in  later 
circumstances  he  is  "  Melech,"  king.     "  El,"  mighty  one, 


CHAP.  X  The  Semitic  Religion  165 

hero,  is  a  more  generic  term  ;  like  our  "  God,"  it  is 
applied  to  any  divine  being.  These  deities,  it  will  be 
noticed,  are  all  masculine ;  but  it  is  not  to  be  supposed 
that  the  Semites  had  no  goddesses.  Not  to  speak  of 
the  goddesses  of  Babylonia,  mere  doubles  of  the  gods 
whose  names  they  bore  (p.  98),  the  earliest  Semites  are 
believed  by  several  great  scholars  to  have  had  a  goddess 
but  no  god.  The  matriarchal  state  of  society,  in  which 
the  mother  alone  ruled  the  family,  came  before  the 
patriarchal,  and  so  the  reign  of  the  goddess  came  before 
that  of  the  god.  Each  community  has  its  own  Al-lat, 
"The  Lady,"  as  she  is  called  in  Arabia,  a  strict  and 
exacting  lady,  not  to  be  confounded  with  the  licentious 
goddesses  of  later  times  ;  and  in  all  Semitic  lands  traces 
of  her  early  prevalence  are  found.^  As  the  male  god 
came  to  the  front,  the  female  became  a  less  definite 
figure,  till  she  was  generally  a  mere  counterpart  of  the 
male  god,  with  little  character  of  her  own.  With  gods 
of  this  type  there  is  little  scope  for  mythology.  The 
history  of  the  god  is  that  of  the  tribe ;  the  gods  are 
too  little  independent  of  their  human  clients  to  form  a 
society  by  themselves,  or  to  give  rise  to  stories  about 
their  doings. 

This  is  one  side  of  the  natural  history  of  the  Semitic 
gods ;  but  that  history  has  another  side.  The  lands 
in  which  the  Semites  dwelt  were  full  from  the  first  of 
sacred  spots ;  and  we  have  to  notice  that  the  god  of  a 
clan  is  also  the  god  of  a  certain  piece  of  earth  where  he  is 
supposed  to  dwell,  which  is  regarded  as  his  property, 
and  the  fertility  of  which  is  ascribed  to  his  beneficence. 
In  the  Bible  we  read  of  sacred  trees,  of  sacred  wells, 
of  sacred  stones  or  mounds,  and  of  stones  or  pillars 
which  were  connected  with  sacrifice.  In  various  Semitic 
lands  there  are  also  sacred  streams  and  sacred  caves. 
The  Semites  in  fact  had  their  share  of  the  inheritance 
the  whole  world  has  derived  from  the  earliest  times,  of 
prehistoric  religious  sites  and  objects.     A  spirit  spoke 

^  See  Robertson  Smith's  Kinship  and  Marriage  in  Early  Aiabia, 


1 66  History  of  Religion  part  in 

in  the  rustling  of  the  branches  of  the  tree,  counsel  could 
be  procured  at  the  spring ;  wherever  there  appeared  to 
be  something  mysterious  in  nature,  a  spirit  was  believed 
to  dwell;  and   especially   in   woods   and   fertile   spots, 
where  wild  beasts  originally  had  their  lair,  a  spirit  was 
thought   to   reside,   which   was    approached   with   fear. 
Many  of  these  superstitions  the  various  branches  of  the 
Semites  long  continued  to  hold ;  ^  but  the  race  super- 
seded in  the  main  this  world  of  spirits  by  a  set  of  gods, 
and  the  magic  addressed  to  spirits  by  religious  observ- 
ances addressed  to  gods.     The  genius  or  jinn  haunting 
the  thicket,  who  had  no  regular  worshippers,  but  was  an 
objectof  fear  to  all,  and  had  to  be  propitiated  or  controlled 
by  mysterious  arts,  gave  way  to  the  god  of  a  clan,  who 
took  up  his  residence  there,  and   received   the  regular 
worship  of  his  clansmen;  the  stone  became  the  symbol 
of  a   deity  who  had  been   asked   and   had   consented 
to  become  identified  with  it  for  the  purpose  of  the  stated 
rites  of  the  clan.     In  this  way  the  clan  gods  became 
localised  as  the  clans  tended  to  acquire  fixed  settle- 
ments, and  each  sacred  spot  was  occupied  by  the  deity 
of  the  clan  who  dwelt  around  it.     The  view  was  held 
that  each  god  was  to  be  found  at  the  spot  where,  on 
some  marked  occasion,  he  had  given  evidence  of  his 
power,  and  he  who  wished  to  enquire  of  that  god  had 
to  go  there.     It  might  happen  that  the  god  manifested 
his  power  at  another  spot  to  one  of  his  dependents  on 
a  journey,  as  Jehovah  did  to  Jacob  at  Bethel  (Genesis 
xxviii.).     Then  that  spot  also  was  recognised  as  a  holy 
one  where  communication  could  be  had  with  the  deity, 
and  the  apparatus  of  worship  was  erected  there  so  that 
the  intercourse  might  be  suitably  carried  on,  as  Jacob 
is  reported  to  have  done.     In  time  also  it  came  to  be 
thought  that  each  god  had  his  land  which  belonged  to 
him,  on  which  alone  his  worship  was  possible,  and  so 

•  The  late  Professor  Ives  Curtius  in  a  paper  read  to  the  Basel  Congress 
{l^$,J^erhandlungen,  p.  154),  on  "  Traces  of  Early  Semitic  Religion  in 
Syria,"  gives  details  of  local  sanctuaries  still  resorted  to  in  that  country. 


CHAP.  X  The  Semitic  Religion  167 

the  earth  was  parcelled  out  among  a  number  of  deities  ; 
and  Naaman,  who  wishes  to  worship  Jehovah  in  his 
Syrian  home,  carries  off  two  mules'  burden  of  Jehovah's 
soil,  to  make  in  the  midst  of  Syria  a  little  piece  of  the 
land  of  the  God  of  Israel  (2  Kings  v.). 

One  circumstance  remains  to  be  mentioned  which 
constitutes  a  marked  difference  between  the  Semitic 
and  the  Aryan  religions.  Aryan  religion  has  its  centre 
in  the  household  ;  the  hearth  is  its  altar,  and  the  gods 
of  the  domestic  cult  are  the  departed  ancestors  of  the 
family.  Semitic  religion  is  without  this  cult ;  the  hearth 
is  not  an  altar ;  the  religious  community  is  not  the 
family  but  the  clan.  The  worship  of  ancestors,  if,  as 
there  is  reason  to  believe,  it  had  once  been  practised 
by  the  Semites  (the  Arabs  tied  a  camel  to  the  grave 
of  the  dead  chief),  lost  at  a  very  early  period  all 
practical  importance.  While  the  early  Semites  believed 
in  the  continued  existence  of  the  departed,  they  thought 
of  them  as  beings  quite  destitute  of  energy,  as  "  shades 
laid  in  the  ground,"  and  did  not  worship  them.  The 
other  world  occupied,  therefore,  a  very  small  space  in 
Semitic  thought.  Religion  confined  itself  to  this  life ; 
after  death,  it  was  held,  even  religion  came  to  an  end. 
A  man  must  enjoy  the  society  of  his  god  in  this  life  ; 
after  death  he  could  take  part  in  no  sacrifice,  and 
could  render  to  his  god  no  thanks  nor  service. 

From  what  has  been  said  the  character  of  sacrifice 
among  the  Semites  is  readily  understood.  Sacrifice 
is  not  domestic  but  takes  place  at  the  spot  where  the 
god  is  thought  to  reside,  or  where  the  symbol  stands 
which  represents  him.  Usually  this  was  an  upright 
monolith,  such  as  is  found  in  every  part  of  the  world, 
and  the  central  act  of  the  sacrifice  consisted  in  applying 
the  blood  of  the  new-slain  victim  to  this  stone.  The 
blood  was  thus  brought  near  to  the  god,  the  clansmen 
also  may  have  touched  the  blood  at  the  same  time; 
and  the  act  meant  that  the  god  and  the  tribesmen, 
all  coming  into  contact  with  the  blood,  which  originally 


1 68  History  of  Religion  part  hi 

perhaps   was   that   of  the   animal   totem   of   the   clan, 

declared  that  they  were  of  the  same  blood,  and  renewed 

the  bond  which  connected  them  with  each  other.     A 

further  feature  of  early  Semitic  sacrifice  is  also   that 

the  slaughter  and  the  blood  ceremony  are  succeeded 

by  a  banquet,  at  which  the  god   is  thought  to  sit  at 

table  with  his  clients,  his  share  being  exposed  for  him 

on  the  stone  or  altar.     When  he  came  to  be  believed 

to  dwell  aloft,  his  share  was  burned  with  fire  so  that 

the  smell  or  finer  essence  of  it  might  ascend  to  him. 

Many  examples  may  be  collected  in  the  early  historical 

books   of  the   Old    Testament  of  sacrifices  which  are 

at  the  same  time  social  and  festive  occasions  ;  in  fact, 

in  early  Israel  every  act  of  slaughter  was  a  sacrifice, 

and  every  sacrifice  a  banquet.     The  people  dance  and 

make    merry    before   their  god,  of  whose   favour   they 

have  just   become   assured   once   more   by  the  act  of 

communion  they  have  observed.     The  undertaking  they 

have  on  hand  is  hallowed  by  his  approval,  so  that  they 

can  boldly  advance  to  it ;   the  corporate  spirit  of  the 

tribe  is  quickened  by  renewed  contact  with  its  head ; 

all  thoughts  of  care   are  far   away  ;   the  religious  act 

makes  the  worshippers  simply  and  unaffectedly  happy, 

if  it  does  not  even  fill  them  with  an  orgiastic  ecstasy. 

This  careless  happiness,  in  connection  with  religious 

acts,  is  found  also  in  Babylonian  sacrifice.     It  is  not, 

however,  peculiar  to  the  Semites,  but  is  characteristic 

of  the  religion  of  the  early  world  in  general.     Nor  is 

it  peculiar  to  this  race  that  religion  does  not  address 

the  individual  as  such,  but  only  as  a  member  of  his 

tribe,  and   that   it  provides  small  comfort  for  private 

sorrows  or  longings.     The  sad  face  is  out  of  place  in 

the  presence  of  the  god.    Religion  is  essentially  a  happy 

thing  ;  sin  is  not  yet  thought  of,  and  if  things  go  wrong, 

the  tribe   never  entertains   any   doubt   but    that   with 

proper  sacrifices  and  promises  the  god  will  show  them 

his  favour  again  and  renew  their  prosperity.     All  this 

is    not    specially    Semitic,   but  simply  early   religion. 


CHAP.  X  The  Semitic  Religion  1 69 

What  is  specially  Semitic  is,  to  repeat  that  with  which 
we  set  out,  that  gods  are  worshipped  whose  relations 
to  their  worshippers  are  borrowed  from  existing  forms 
of  society.  The  god  is  the  father  or  the  master  or 
the  champion,  of  the  circle  of  worshippers ;  he  is  of 
their  kindred,  he  is  their  greatest  and  strongest  clans- 
man, he  belongs  to  them  and  to  none  but  them.  This, 
whether  it  is  derived — as  Professor  Robertson  Smith 
thinks — from  the  ideas  of  totemism  or  not,  leads  to  a 
religion  which  is  exclusive  and  intense,  and  cannot  be 
trifled  with.  The  god  who  is  a  man's  master,  and  the 
head  of  his  clan,  stands  in  a  more  imperative  position 
towards  him  than  the  god  of  the  sky,  or  than  a  departed 
ancestor.  He  does  not  change  with  the  seasons  or 
the  weather,  nor  is  there  any  doubt  as  to  his  intentions 
and  demands.  Semitic  religion,  even  at  this  stage,  is 
a  very  real  thing,  and  may  easily,  in  favouring  circum- 
stances, become  a  force  of  overmastering  energy. 

Books  Recommended 

Hommel,  Die  Semitischen  Vdlke?-  und  Sprachen. 

"Semites,"  by  M'Curdy,  in  Hastings'  Bible  Dictionary,  vol.  v. 

Cumont,  Les  Religions  oricniales  dans  la  Paganisme  Komain,  1907. 


CHAPTER   XI 

CANAANITES  AND   PHENICIANS 

When  the  Children  of  Israel  crossed  the  Jordan  and 
settled  in  Palestine,  they  found  that  country  inhabited 
by  a  race  of  men  who  spoke  the  same  language  as 
themselves,  and  who  were  much  further  advanced  than 
they  in  civilisation.  The  letters  of  El-Amarna  which 
belong  to  this  period  show  Syria  to  have  been  full  of 
small  theocratic  states,  all  pervaded,  though  now  under 
the  power  of  Egypt,  by  Babylonian  culture,  each  with 
a  god  and  a  settled  worship  of  its  own.  The  Israelites 
of  a  later  time  regarded  the  Canaanites  with  such 
disdain  that  they  reckoned  them  (Genesis  x.  6,  15)  as 
belonging  to  an  inferior  race ;  but  the  two  peoples 
belonged  to  the  same  race,  and  had  many  common 
ideas  and  practices.  In  religion  they  resembled  each 
other,  or  Israel  could  never  have  been  tempted  so 
strongly,  and  for  so  long  a  period,  to  adopt  the  rites 
of  the  people  they  conquered. 

The  Israelites  were  not  the  only  people  who  invaded 
the  land  of  the  Canaanites  and  stayed  in  it  Three 
such  invasions  took  place :  those  of  the  Phenicians, 
of  the  Philistines,  and  of  the  Hebrews — the  first  and 
third  being  Semitic  peoples,  and  perhaps  the  second 
also.  The  Philistines,  settling  on  the  south-eastern 
corner  of  the  Mediterranean,  had  a  Semitic  religion,  of 
which  the  fish-god  Dagon,  the  Fly-Baal  of  Ekron,  and 
the  Ashtoreth,  probably  of  Ascalon,  are  known  figures. 
The  Philistines,  however,  lost  ultimately  their  separate 

170 


CHAP.  XI         Canaanites  and  Phenicians  171 

character,  and  ceased  to  exist  as  an  independent  people. 
It  will  not  be  necessary  for  us  to  mention  them  again. 
The  Phenicians,  settling  on  the  northern  sea-board  of 
Syria,  where  great  trade  routes  to  East  and  West 
converged,  and  where  good  harbours  could  be  made, 
became  a  nation  of  merchants,  and  kept  up  active 
communication  with  the  great  kingdoms  of  the  East, 
with  Egypt,  and  with  the  islands  and  the  distant  shores 
of  Western  Europe.  The  carriers  of  the  ancient  world, 
they  transmitted  to  Europe  not  only  the  spices  and 
the  fabrics  but  also  the  ideas  and  the  practices  of 
Asia,  and  rendered  to  the  world  the  inestimable  service 
of  awaking  the  slumbering  energies  of  the  Aryan 
peoples  to  new  life. 

A  short  chapter  may  be  devoted  to  the  religion  of  the 
Canaanites  and  to  that  of  the  Phenicians,  not  because 
these  were  important  in  themselves,  for  in  neither  was 
there  anything  original  or  anything  destined  to  survive, 
but  because  of  the  light  they  throw  on  other  religions 
which  were  to  have  a  great  career.  It  was  in  conflict 
with  the  Canaanite  religion  that  the  faith  of  Israel  first 
realised  its  true  nature  and  was  led  to  organise  itself 
in  a  manner  befitting  its  character.  And  from  Phenicia 
both  Israel  and  Greece  accepted  many  a  suggestion, 
both  in  external  matters  connected  with  worship  and 
in  matters  of  a  deeper  nature. 

The  religion  of  the  Canaanites  is  well  known  to  us 
from  the  Old  Testament.  It  is  such  a  system  as  we 
found  that  of  the  Semites  to  be,  with  certain  peculiar 
developments,  of  which  we  have  already  seen  some- 
thing in  our  chapter  on  Babylonia.  A  local  community 
recognises  an  invisible  head,  with  whom  it  meets  at  the 
sacred  spot,  whom  it  regards  as  overlord  or  master,  of 
whose  favour  it  is  in  no  doubt,  and  whom  it  serves 
with  sacrifices  and  with  lively  manifestations  of  joy  at 
certain  fixed  periods.  The  god  is  called  Baal.  This, 
however,  is  not  a  proper  name  but  a  title ;  it  means 
lord,  master,  and   the  Baal   may  have  a  name  of  his 


172  History  of  Religion  part  hi 

own  in  addition :  we  hear  of  Baal  Peor,  the  lord  of 
Peor,  and  of  many  another.  Baals  are  spoken  of  in 
the  plural;  we  read  in  Judges  ii.  11  and  in  other 
passages  that  the  Israelites  followed  the  Baals,  that 
is  the  gods  of  the  Canaanites.  Each  place  has  its  own 
Baal,  who  is  worshipped  at  the  local  sanctuary.  The 
sanctuary  is  at  an  elevated  spot  outside  the  town  or 
village,  either  on  a  natural  eminence  or  on  a  mound 
artificially  made  for  the  purpose ;  these  are  the  "  high 
places"  of  the  Old  Testament;  originally  Canaanite 
places  of  worship,  they  drew  to  themselves  also  the 
worship  of  Israel.  The  apparatus  of  worship  at  these 
shrines  is  of  a  very  simple  nature.  An  upright  stone 
represents  the  god ;  it  is  not  a  statue  of  him,  being 
unhewn  and  having  no  resemblance  to  the  human 
figure.  He  was  supposed  to  come  to  the  stone  when 
meeting  with  his  worshippers  ;  and  in  the  earliest  times 
of  Semitic  religion  this  stone  served  the  purpose  of  an 
altar:  the  gifts,  which  were  not  originally  burned,  were 
laid  upon  it,  or  the  blood  of  the  victim  was  applied 
to  it.  But  besides  the  altar  and  the  upright  stone  or 
massebah  the  Canaanite  shrine  had  another  piece  of 
furniture.  A  massive  tree-trunk,  fixed  in  the  ground 
and  with  some  of  its  branches  perhaps  still  remaining, 
represented  the  female  deity  who  is  the  invariable 
companion  of  the  Baal.  This  is  the  Ashera  of  Canaan, 
a  word  which  in  the  Authorised  Version  is  translated 
"grove,"  after  an  error  of  the  Vulgate,  but  which 
in  the  Revised  Version  is  rightly  left  untranslated. 
(Judges  iii.  7,  vi.  25  ;  2  Kings  xxiii.  6,  there  is  one  in 
the  Temple  at  Jerusalem ;  etc.)  The  word  Ashera  is 
in  such  passages  the  designation  of  the  tree  which 
stood  to  represent  the  goddess ;  whether  it  is  ever  the 
proper  name  of  the  goddess  herself  is  doubtful.  At 
any  rate  Ashera,  like  Baal,  is  not  the  name  of  one 
historic  deity,  but  a  name  applied  to  the  goddess  of 
each  place  all  over  the  country. 

The   character   of  Canaanite   religion   is   clearly  re- 


CHAP.  XI         Canaanites  and  Phenicians  173 

vealed  in  its  apparatus  of  worship.  We  saw  that  the 
Babylonians  added  to  many  of  the  gods  of  their 
country  a  female  counterpart,  turning  the  name  of 
the  god  into  a  feminine  form  (p.  98,  also  p.  165). 
In  Canaan  we  find  that  Semitic  worship  is  addressed 
to  pairs  of  deities ;  there  is  a  god  and  a  goddess  at 
each  shrine.  While  it  would  be  wrong  to  regard  this 
as  the  general  type  of  Semitic  religion, — our  chapter 
on  that  subject  points  to  a  different  conclusion,  and 
the  great  gods  of  Phenicia,  of  Moab,  and  of  Israel  are 
solitary  beings, — we  must  recognise  that  the  worship 
of  god  and  goddess  was  widespread  in  Semitic  peoples. 
In  Canaan  it  is  not  difficult  to  understand  it.  We  have 
here  the  worship  of  an  agricultural  community  ;  and  as 
the  Baal  is  the  lord  of  the  soil  and  the  author  of  its 
fertility,  who  is  entitled  to  receive  the  first-fruits,  so 
the  Ashera  is  the  fertile  matron  who  represents  the 
principle  of  increase.  The  Old  Testament  leaves  us 
in  no  doubt  as  to  the  kind  of  worship  which  was 
carried  on  at  these  shrines.  The  festivals  were  those 
of  the  farmer's  calendar ;  the  Baal  is  presented  with 
the  first-fruits  of  corn  and  wine  and  oil,  in  the  midst 
of  general  feasting  and  boisterous  merry-making.  His 
consort,  on  the  other  hand,  is  served  with  rites  apply- 
ing in  the  most  direct  manner  the  principle  she  repre- 
sents. The  shrine  has  a  staff  of  fem^ale  attendants 
for  this  part  of  the  service  of  religion.  The  rustic 
worship  of  Palestine  thus  shows  us  a  side  of  the  religion 
of  Western  Asia  which  we  know  from  other  sources 
to  have  been  widely  diffused.  A  female  deity  like 
the  Babylonian  Ishtar  (p.  102),  is  served  with  impure 
rites  in  great  cities  as  well  as  in  country  districts, 
and  her  worship  spread  westwards  with  other  Eastern 
products.  She  is  found  as  Baalit,  as  Mylitta,^  as 
Astarte ;  the  Greeks  call  her  Aphrodite,  and  her  horrid 
worship  found  entrance  in  various  Greek  cities. 

To  the   Israelites  the  worship  of  Canaan  proved  a 

*  Ileiod.  i.  199. 


174  History  of  Religion  part  m 

great  temptation  (Numbers  xxv.),  but  they  gradually 
rose  above  it.  The  Phenicians  also  came  to  have 
gods  of  a  much  higher  character,  and  of  these  also 
we  must  speak.  The  Phenicians  were  not  original  in 
their  religion  any  more  than  in  their  art ;  their  religion 
began  with  the  ordinary  Semitic  notions  as  these  had 
been  applied  by  the  older  population  in  Syria,  and 
they  improved  it  by  borrowing  from  various  parts  of 
the  world  with  which  they  trafficked.  So  various  were 
their  borrowings  that  it  is  impossible  to  draw  up  a 
consistent  system  of  their  gods.  One  town  has  one 
set  of  gods,  another  town  another,  and  the  same  deity 
wears  different  and  even  opposite  characters  in  different 
places.  All  that  can  be  done  is  to  single  out  a  few 
features  which  we  can  see  to  have  been  on  the  whole 
characteristic  of  Phenician  religion,  and  to  have  enabled 
it  to  influence  the  worship  of  other  peoples. 

The  Phenicians  were  very  much  in  earnest  about 
the  maintenance  of  state  and  of  religion.  In  their 
successive  city-states  of  Sidon,  Tyre,  and  Carthage, 
we  see  them  exhibiting  an  intense  devotion  to  the 
commonwealth,  and  very  much  under  the  influence 
of  their  priesthood.  Semitic  religion  tends  to  grow 
more  sombre  and  intense  as  it  develops ;  and  the 
Phenicians,  while  still  holding  the  principle  of  a  god 
and  goddess,  concentrate  their  worship  more  and  more 
on  a  single  divine  figure,  and  come  to  regard  that 
figure  from  a  greater  distance  and  with  greater  awe. 
The  liberal  and  easy-going  Baals  and  Asheras  of 
agricultural  life  are  not  suited  to  the  temple  of  a 
great  commercial  city ;  a  figure  of  more  dignity  is 
wanted.  And  thus  above  the  crowd  of  Baals  there 
appears  the  Moloch  or  king,  a  much  greater  being 
and  requiring  a  much  statelier  service.  Moloch  also 
is  not  originally  a  proper  name ;  there  are  various 
Molochs  or  king-gods  who  rise  above  the  Baals,  and 
the  individuals  have  special  designations,  as  Melcarth, 
"  king   of  the   city."      This   type   of  deity   occurs   not 


CHAP.  XI         Canaanites  and  Phenicians  175 

with  the  Phenicians  only,  but  with  several  other 
Syrian  peoples  about  the  same  time.  The  Moloch  of 
Sidon  and  Tyre  is  a  being  of  the  same  character  as 
the  chief  gods  of  Moab,  Ammon,  and  Israel.  He 
has  to  do  not  only  with  the  blessings  of  agricultural 
life,  but  with  state  and  government.  He  is  the  founder 
of  a  state ;  he  is  the  inventor  of  navigation  and  of 
purple ;  he  is  the  first  king ;  when  a  colony  is  sent 
out,  it  goes  with  his  approval,  and  he  himself  leads 
the  expedition  ;  he  is  the  dread  ruler  whom  none  must 
disobey ;  the  majesty,  the  power,  and  the  enterprise 
of  the  state  are  all  embodied  in  him.  And  as  the 
king-god  is  far  above  the  landlord-god  in  power,  he  is 
infinitely  removed  from  him  in  character  also.  The 
chief  gods  of  Sidon  and  Tyre  have  nothing  luxurious 
or  effeminate  about  them.  They  are  strict  and  awful 
beings,  and  must  not  be  incautiously  approached. 
They  retain  their  primitive  character  as  sources  of 
life,  but  they  are  destroyers  of  life  as  well.  Pure 
and  holy  themselves,  they  require  purity  and  holiness 
in  all  who  draw  near  to  them.  Their  priests  are  celi- 
bates, their  priestesses  virgins.  They  require  sacrifices 
of  a  very  different  nature  from  those  of  the  Baals, 
more  costly  and  more  dreadful.  Human  sacrifices 
appear  to  have  been  a  regular  feature  of  their  worship : 
when  the  Israelites  turn  to  the  worship  of  Phenician 
gods,  or  when  they  copy  Phenician  practices,  we  hear 
of  their  "  making  their  children  pass  through  the  fire  " 
— that  is,  offering  them  up  as  burnt-sacrifices.  The 
Moloch  requires  what  is  most  costly  as  a  sacrifice,  or 
what  will  cause  the  strongest  thrill  of  terror  in  his 
worship.  Even  the  first-born  child  is  not  to  be  kept 
back  from  him  (2  Kings  xxiii.  10,  Jerem.  vii.  31,  cf. 
Micah  vi.  7). 

So  far  the  origin  of  the  Phenician  gods  is  simple. 
They  are  purely  Semitic  deities,  formed  on  the  pattern 
of  human  rulers  and  deriving  their  attributes  from  that 
character.      When   a   state   becomes   highly  organised 


176  History  of  Religion  part  in 

before  it  is  quite  civilised  in  other  respects,  its  religion 
is  apt  to  be  stern  and  cruel ;  of  this  various  instances 
may  be  found  in  the  history  of  religion,  and  the  present 
is  one  of  them.  The  Phenician  gods  were  of  such  a 
character  as  to  favour  the  survival  of  savage  practices  ; 
the  Semite,  as  we  saw,  is  extremely  matter-of-fact  and 
practical  in  his  religion,  and  a  god  who  was  a  king 
would  receive  the  same  kind  of  offerings  as  the  king 
of  Sidon  or  of  Tyre  was  accustomed  to.  A  strict  and 
dreadful  religion  thus  survives  beyond  the  savage  state  ; 
pleasure  is  taken  in  trampling  on  natural  feelings  and  in 
setting  forth  shocking  spectacles  at  the  bidding  of  the 
deity. 

Astral  Deities  of  Phenicia.— It  is  not  possible  to 
arrange  in  a  system  the  remaining  phenomena  of 
Phenician  religion.  In  the  historical  period  the  gods 
have  another  character  besides  that  of  being  heads 
and  rulers  of  communities.  They  are  connected  with 
the  heavenly  bodies.  The  chief  god,  whatever  name 
he  bears.  El,  Baal,  Moloch,  Rimmon,  or  Adonis,  is 
always  the  sun.  A  sun  -  god  may  have  come  from 
Egypt  or  Babylon,  but  there  is  no  reason  why  the 
Phenicians  may  not  have  had  a  sun-god  from  the  first, 
whose  character  spread  to  their  other  deities.  And  in 
accordance  with  the  tendency  above  spoken  of,  the  sun- 
god  has  a  consort.  Sometimes  his  consort  is  the  earth  ; 
and  then  we  have  a  sensuous  and  immoral  worship 
such  as  that  of  the  Canaanites.  Sometimes  it  is  the 
moon  ;  her  name  is  Astarte  or  Ashtoreth,  and  she  is 
a  very  different  being  from  the  Ashera  of  Canaan ; 
the  names  are  not  the  same,  and  the  characters  are 
opposite.  Ashtoreth,  like  the  primitive  Semitic  goddess 
(p.  165),  is  a  chaste  matron  ;  she  is  represented  robed 
and  in  stately  attitude,  and  is  a  fit  companion  for  the 
strict  Moloch  of  the  cities.  Her  worship  is  described 
to  us  by  Jeremiah,  in  whose  time  the  matrons  of 
Jerusalem  made  cakes  for  her  and  poured  out  drink- 
offerings  and  burned  incense  to  her  as  the  "queen  of 


CHAP.  XI         Canaanites  and Pkenicians  \yy 

heaven " ;  all  this  was  done  with  the  knowledge  and 
co-operation  of  their  husbands,  so  that  the  worship 
had  nothing  immoral  about  it.  This  strict  goddess  is 
not  to  be  identified  with  Istar  of  Babylonia,  although 
the  names  are  alike.  Istar  is  not  a  moon-goddess  like 
Ashtoreth ;  in  Babylonia,  in  fact,  the  moon  is  masculine, 
and  the  characters  of  the  two  goddesses  are  opposite. 
The  Sidonian  Astarte  and  the  Canaanite  Ashera  repre- 
sent two  opposing  types  of  female  deity,  both  of  which 
may  possibly  have  their  reflections  in  Greece — the 
latter  in  the  lower  forms  of  the  worship  of  Aphrodite, 
and  the  former  in  the  figures  of  such  strict  maiden 
goddesses  as  Artemis  and  Athene. 

Another  worship  which  prevailed  in  Phenicia  should 
not  be  left  unnoticed — that  of  the  Cabiri.     There  were 
temples  of  the  Cabiri  in  several  of  the  towns ;    their 
worship,  however,  was  secret,  and  little  was  known  of 
it  even  in  antiquity.     We  know  at  all  events  that  the 
Cabiri  were  seven  in  number,  and  the  number  is  thought 
to  be  connected,  not  with  the  seven  planets,  but  with 
the  seven  heavenly  spheres  of  early  astronomy.     They 
have  a  head  called  Eshmun,  who  is  the  god  of  the  eighth 
or  highest  sphere.      The  Cabiri  are  beings  of  a  moral 
character ;  they  are  not  only  mighty  ones  and  creators, 
but  they  are  the  children  of  Sydyk — that  is,  of  Righteous- 
ness; and  they  give  counsel.    It  is  here  that  the  tendency 
to  speculative  exaltation  of  the  deity  appears  in  Phenicia; 
but  there  is  little  of  it,  and  neither  in  this  direction  nor 
in  that  of  morals  was  the  religion  destined  to  have  any 
remarkable   growth.      The  service  of  the  gods  was  so 
closely  identified  with  the  service  of  the  state, — for  either 
the  priest  and  the  king  were  one,  as  in  Israel  after  the 
exile,  or   nothing   could   be   done   without   the   priest- 
hood,— that  no  independent  religious  development  was 
possible.     In  a  theocracy  religion  cannot  grow,  at  least 
it  cannot  be  openly  acknowledged  to  do  so ;    and  the 
prophet   and    reformer    finds    every   influence    arrayed 
against  him. 

M 


178  History  of  Religion  part  hi 

How  greatly  Israel  was  indebted  to  Phenician  art 
is  known  to  all.  It  was  by  artificers  from  Tyre  that 
Solomon's  royal  buildings  were  planned  and  executed, 
when  he  had  married  a  daughter  of  Egypt  and  was  com- 
pelled to  aim  at  some  magnificence.  A  royal  temple 
formed  part  of  these  buildings,  and  was  necessarily 
erected  according  to  the  ideas  which  prevailed  in  the 
more  advanced  neighbouring  kingdoms.  It  was  from 
the  same  source  that  the  Greeks  a  century  or  two  later 
drew  suggestions  for  their  sacred  architecture  ;  and  thus 
/  .  we  find  that  the  ground-plan  of  Solomon's  temple  and 
that  of  the  Greek  temple  are  closely  similar.  Both  are 
to  be  traced  ultimately  to  the  model  derived  by  the 
Phenicians  from  Egypt.  And  those  who  borrowed 
from  Phenicia  the  form  of  their  temple,  borrowed  many 
other  things  too.  In  the  porch  of  Solomon's  temple 
stood  two  great  pillars  of  bronze,  which  were  called 
Jachin  and  Boaz  ;  they  were  simply  the  symbols  which 
stood  at  the  entrance  to  every  Phenician  temple  of  the 
sun-god  worshipped  there.  The  priests  of  Israel  were 
dressed  like  those  of  Tyre  and  Sidon  ;  they  offered  the 
same  animals  as  sacrifices,  they  received  the  same  dues 
for  their  maintenance.  When  so  much  apparatus  was 
borrowed,  it  is  no  wonder  that  the  gods  of  Phenicia  were 
at  times  worshipped  at  Jerusalem.  We  see  from  this 
whole  chapter  that  the  religion  of  Israel  was  not  so 
much  apart  from  that  of  the  other  Syrian  peoples  as 
we  have  been  wont  to  imagine.  Even  in  his  religion 
Israel  owed  something  to  his  neighbours;  his  religion 
came  to  be  better  than  theirs,  but  it  was  the  result  of 
a  movement  in  which  they  also  had  taken  part. 

Books  Recommended 

The  Histories  of  Antiquity.     E.  Meyer,  Duncker  (see  p.  loi). 

Tide's  Eayptische  en  Mesopotamische  Godsdiensten.     Book  II.  :  Phenicia 

and  Israel. 
The  Histories  of  Israel,  especially  Kuenen,  The  Religion  of  Israel. 
F.  Jeremias,  in  De  la  Saussaye,  vol.  i.  pp.  348-383. 
E.  Meyer,  "  Phenicia,"  in  Encyclopcedia  Biblica.  ■ 


CHAPTER   XII 

ISRAEL 

It  Is  a  circumstance  of  the  greatest  value  for  the  science 
of  religion  that  the  Old  Testament  is  so  well  known. 
That  book  is  the  most  valuable  literary  storehouse  we 
possess  of  the  facts  and  ideas  connected  with  the  early 
religion  of  mankind  ;  it  is  the  best  text-book  of  the 
earlier  portion  of  our  subject.  In  our  chapters  on 
primitive  worship,  as  well  as  in  that  on  the  Semites, 
we  have  drawn  largely  from  this  source,  and  for  the 
earlier  stages  of  the  religion  of  Israel  we  may  refer  to 
these  chapters.  We  have  now,  however,  to  deal  specially 
with  the  religion  of  the  Old  Testament,  and  to  endeavour 
to  show,  as  has  been  done  in  other  cases,  what  was  its 
specific  character,  and  how  its  character  determined 
its  history.  The  story  to  be  told  in  this  chapter  is, 
even  apart  from  our  special  interest  in  it,  as  fascinating 
as  any  in  this  volume ;  it  was  through  a  mental  move- 
ment of  unparalleled  grandeur,  as  well  as  through  an 
outward  history  of  tragic  and  entrancing  interest,  that 
the  Jews  came  to  possess  the  religion  which  was  the 
desire  of  all  nations,  and  the  chief  preparation  for 
Christianity. 

We  have  to  begin,  however,  with  repeating  in  this 
case  what  has  been  and  will  be  the  burden  of  our 
opening  paragraphs  in  many  chapters  of  this  book, 
namely  that  the  traditional  ideas  about  the  nature  of 
this  religion  require  to  be  corrected,  and  that  its  sacred 

179 


i8o  History  of  Religion  part  m 

books  as  they  now  stand  do  not  accurately  represent 
its  history.  The  Old  Testament  literature  has  suffered 
in  a  high  degree  what  seems  to  be  the  predestined 
fate  of  every  set  of  sacred  books.  Old  materials  and 
new  are  mixed  up  together  in  it ;  many  works  have 
been  revised  by  later  editors,  and  so  much  changed, 
that  laborious  critical  processes  are  necessary  before 
they  can  be  used  by  the  historian.  In  forming  his  first 
impressions  as  to  the  relations  the  books  bear  to  each 
other,  and  as  to  the  purport  of  the  whole,  the  reader 
is  naturally  guided  by  the  order  in  which  he  finds 
them  ;  but  the  order  in  which  the  sacred  books  of  the 
Jews  stand  in  the  Old  Testament  was  fixed  from  a 
peculiar  point  of  view  at  a  late  age  in  Jewish  history, 
and  is  in  many  respects  quite  unnatural  and  misleading. 
To  come  to  particulars  ;  the  Old  Testament  as  it  stands 
suggests  that  the  Law  was  the  earliest  product  of  Jewish 
literature,  and  that  all  the  details  of  ritual,  as  well  as 
of  moral  and  social  duty,  were  fixed  for  the  Jews  at 
the  very  outset  of  their  history  ;  and  it  suggests  that 
the  books  of  the  prophets  were  written  last.  This,  till 
quite  recently,  was  generally  believed  to  be  the  case, 
but  by  the  labours  of  a  series  of  illustrious  scholars  of 
the  Old  Testament  the  conclusion  has  been  reached, 
which  is  now  less  and  less  disputed,  that  the  earlier 
prophetic  books  come  first  in  chronological  order,  and 
that  the  law,  which  is  not  all  of  one  piece,  but  contains 
a  number  of  codes  of  different  periods,  together  with  a 
collection  of  legends  and  traditions  drawn  from  various 
quarters  and  subjected  to  editorial  treatment,  did  not 
assume  the  form  in  which  we  have  it  till  after  the 
exile.  The  historical  books,  in  which  no  doubt  various 
ancient  pieces  are  embodied,  were  written  under  the 
inspiration  of  prophetic  ideas;  and  the  latest  books  of 
all  are  those  which  stand  in  the  centre  of  the  Old 
Testament  in  the  English  Bible ;  the  Psalter,  which 
had  been  growing  during  a  long  period  before  it  came 
to  contain  its  present  number  of  pieces,  the  books  of 


CHAP.   XII 


Israel  i 8 i 


morals  and  philosophy,  and  the  book  of  Job.  Daniel 
belongs  to  the  period  of  the  Maccabees.  The  historian, 
therefore,  starts  from  the  age  of  the  prophets  of  the 
eighth  century  B.C.  The  writings  of  these  great  men 
afford  a  graphic  picture  of  their  time,  and  an  entirely 
trustworthy  account  of  the  mental  furniture  Israel  then 
possessed.  From  this  fixed  point  the  student  is  able 
to  infer  what  happened  to  Israel  in  earlier  times,  and 
to  judge  of  the  spirit  in  which  the  early  history  of 
the  people  was  afterwards  written  and  edited.  The 
history  of  Israel  which  the  student  arrives  at  after  these 
critical  processes  differs,  it  is  true,  in  very  important 
respects  from  that  which  appears  at  first  sight  on  the 
face  of  the  Bible.  But  the  same  thing  has  occurred 
in  the  case  of  other  nations.  The  sacred  books  of  Persia 
also  have  to  be  turned  outside  in  before  they  furnish 
the  historian  with  an  account  he  can  accept.  Even  of 
the  speeches  of  Mohammed  the  same  is  true.  Those 
who  undertake  the  task  of  codifying  sacred  literatures 
have  to  consider  the  purpose  to  which  the  books  are 
to  be  put  in  the  community,  and  to  arrange  them  so 
as  best  to  serve  that  purpose ;  they  do  not  ask.  How 
must  they  be  arranged  so  as  to  exhibit  the  true  sequence 
of  the  history  ? — that  interest  only  arises  much  later — 
but.  How  will  they  best  serve  the  needs  of  the  com- 
munity? The  order  of  books  in  sacred  collections  is, 
therefore,  fixed  by  practical  considerations,  now  of  one 
kind  and  now  of  another,  and  not  according  to  the 
requirements  of  the  student  of  history.  We  now  proceed 
to  give  the  outline  of  the  history  of  the  religion  of  Israel 
as  it  appears  in  the  light  of  recent  critical  investigation. 
Israel  consisted  originally  of  a  group  of  tribes,  bound 
together  by  the  memory  of  a  great  deliverance  they 
had  experienced  in  common,  and  of  battles  in  which 
they  had  fought  side  by  side.  Accustomed  to  the  free 
life  of  shepherds,  they  had  been  enslaved  in  Egypt 
and  held  to  intolerable  tasks ;  but  they  had  made  their 
escape    in   a   wonderful   manner   under  a   leader   who 


1 82  History  of  Religion  part  m 

had  known  how  to  kindle  them  to  heroic  efforts  by 
reminding  them  of  their  religious  traditions.  Under 
his  leadership  they  had  visited  the  Sinaitic  peninsula 
after  leaving  Egypt,  and  had  wandered  in  the  regions  to 
the  north  of  Sinai,  till  at  last  they  conquered  territory  to 
the  east  of  Jordan,  on  which  some  of  them  settled,  while 
others  crossed  the  Jordan,  and  took  up  their  abodes 
among  the  Canaanite  tribes  whom  they  found  there. 

The  nation  and  the  religion  came  into  the  world  at 
the  same  time.  Although  the  tribes  retained  their 
separate  gods  and  religious  observances,  and  families 
among  them  also  had  their  own  family  cults,  the  bond 
by  which  they  had  been  formed  into  a  people  and  made 
capable  of  common  action  was  stronger  than  these 
earlier  ties ;  the  God  whom  Moses  proclaimed  as  their 
head  inspired  in  them  an  enthusiasm  and  vigour  unknown 
before.  His  name  was  Yahweh,  and  is  said  to  have  a 
metaphysical  meaning,  and  to  designate  the  god  as  more 
really  existing  than  any  other.  This  is  doubted  ;  what 
is  certain  is  that  Moses  declared  that  Yahweh  promised 
to  be  with  the  tribes,  and  that  they  took  him  for  their 
God.  Jehovah,  to  use  the  more  familiar  form  of  the 
name,  was  perhaps  the  God  of  the  most  powerful  of  the 
tribes ;  he  was  probably  a  nature-god,  and  connected 
with  storms  and  thunder,  and  he  had  his  seat  at  Mount 
Sinai.  Thither  the  tribes  repaired  to  hold  a  solemn 
meeting  with  him  ;  from  there  he  was  afterwards  repre- 
sented as  coming  forth  when  about  to  do  any  mighty 
act  for  his  people.  He  is  thought  of  as  a  being  who 
cannot  be  seen,  since  he  dwells  in  clouds  and  darkness. 
He  utters  his  voice  in  thunder  and  storm  ;  he  is 
possessed  of  irresistible  energy  which  he  unfolds  in  battle, 
and  in  which  he  causes  his  people  to  share  when  he 
goes  before  them  to  war.  But  he  is  also  a  god  of 
counsel,  and  takes  the  greatest  interest  in  the  moral  and 
social  life  of  his  people.  His  human  representatives, 
aided  by  his  spirit,  settle  disputes  which  are  laid  before 
them,  and  oronounce  authoritative  counsels  on  difficult 


CHAP.  XII  Israel  1S3 

matters.  This  kind  of  guidance  is  constantly  going  on, 
so  that  Jehovah  is  felt  to  be  watching  over  the  conduct 
of  his  people,  and  to  be  an  effective  helper  and  guide  in 
their  domestic  concerns,  which  not  every  god  attends  to, 
as  well  as  in  their  meetings  with  their  enemies. 

The  Early  Ritual  was  Simple. — In  all  this  we  have  a 
very  apt  example  of  the  advance  which,  as  we  saw  in 
a  former  chapter,  religion  makes  when  it  becomes 
national  instead  of  merely  tribal ;  when  the  great  god 
of  the  nation  takes  his  place  above  the  gods  of  the 
tribes.  In  Israel,  however,  it  is  not  the  case  that  the 
national  religion,  when  it  appears,  at  once  develops  a 
higher  style  of  worship,  and  draws  attention  to  itself 
by  greater  pomp  and  deeper  solemnity  of  form.  The 
priestly  legislation  of  Exodus  and  Leviticus,  indeed, 
represents  this  as  having  been  the  case.  Here  the 
tribes  have  scarcely  adopted  the  service  of  Jehovah, 
when  an  army  of  thousands  of  priests  is  called  into 
being,  for  whose  maintenance  elaborate  provision  is 
made,  and  a  splendid  and  highly-organised  worship  is 
arranged.  This  directory  of  worship,  however,  most 
scholars  are  agreed,  never  was  in  operation  till  after  the 
exile :  we  see  in  it  the  worship  which  Ezra  and  his 
fellow-scribes  aimed  at  introducing  in  the  second  temple 
at  Jerusalem.  The  worship  of  the  wilderness  and  of 
the  early  period  of  Israel  in  Canaan  was  of  a  very 
different  nature.  The  leading  features  and  principles  of 
it  differed  little  from  what  we  have  described  in  former 
parts  of  this  book  (pp.  69  sqq.,  168).  It  was  conducted 
according  to  custom  rather  than  statute,  and  its  lead- 
ing characteristic  was  that  it  was  a  common  meal  at 
which  the  god  was  present  along  with  his  worshippers, 
and  assurances  were  given  that  the  good  understand- 
ing still  continued  which  bound  the  tribesmen  to  their 
god  and  each  other.  It  was  by  the  person  of  his  god 
rather  than  by  a  more  elaborate  worship,  or  a  more 
numerous  priesthood,  that  Israel  was  distinguished  from 
Moab  and  Ammon. 


184  History  of  Religion  part  m 

Contact  with  Canaanite  Religion.  —  After  being 
delivered  out  of  Egypt  by  the  power  of  Jehovah,  and 
entering  Canaan,  Israel  was  placed  in  a  position  in 
which  it  is  wonderful,  indeed,  that  the  national  character 
and  the  national  religion  were  not  merged  in  those  of 
the  surrounding  population.  Bringing  with  them  the 
few  ideas  and  the  scanty  appliances  of  the  wilderness, 
they  found  themselves  dwelling  amid  a  people  whose 
civilisation  was  fully  formed,  and  who  possessed  a 
comparatively  elaborate  worship.  The  tribes  of  Canaan 
spoke  the  same  language,  and  were  of  the  same  race 
with  themselves,  but  had  advanced  to  the  higher  life 
of  agriculture  and  of  cities.  Their  worship  was  the 
same  in  principle  as  that  of  Israel,  but  it  had  a  higher 
organisation.  The  land  was  studded  with  sacred  places, 
the  sanctity  of  which  Israel  could  not  deny,  and  which 
formed  centres  of  pilgrimage  and  worship.  The  worship 
of  the  Canaanites  was  described  in  last  chapter  (pp. 
171-172) ;  the  reader  will  remember  the  upright  stone 
(masseba)  representing  the  Baal,  and  the  tree-trunk 
(ashera),  if  there  was  no  living  tree,  representing  the 
goddess.  If  all  this  or  most  of  it  was  new  to  the 
Israelites,  so  was  the  sacred  year  which  fixed  the 
seasons  of  worship  in  Canaan.  Minor  festivals  were 
fixed  by  the  appearance  of  the  new  moon,  or  by  the 
regular  return  of  the  seventh  day  (it  is  doubtful  if 
the  Sabbath  was  observed  in  the  wilderness,  it  is  con- 
nected with  agriculture,  and  is  scarcely  compatible  with 
pastoral  life) ;  greater  ones  by  the  epochs  of  the  year, 
such  as  harvest  and  vintage.  The  worship  connected 
with  agriculture  in  the  early  world  is  of  a  noisy  and 
frantic  order ;  and  where  gods  are  worshipped  who  are 
connected  with  fertility,  it  is  apt,  as  we  saw,  to  be 
marked  by  sexual  features. 

Danger  of  Fusion. — The  Israelites  were  naturally 
prompted  to  adopt  what  they  could  of  the  religion  of 
the  Canaanites.  The  old  sacred  places  of  the  land, 
whether  connected  with  their  own  ancestral  traditions 


CHAP,  xfi  Israel  185 

or  not,  they  could  not  help  adopting ;  it  would  have 
been  strange,  indeed,  if,  when  they  became  agriculturists, 
they  had  not  adopted  the  agricultural  festivals ;  and  if, 
as  was  natural,  they  regarded  the  Baal  of  the  Canaanite 
as  the  lord  of  the  land  and  the  giver  of  its  fertility,  their 
thanks  for  the  harvest  would  be  addressed  to  him 
(Hosea  ii.  8).  Their  worship  of  Jehovah  could  not  be 
left  poorer  than  that  which  their  neighbours  addressed 
to  Baal ;  for  it  also  they  erected  asheras  and  made  use 
of  standing  stones,  and  of  Jehovah  also  they  had  images. 
One  of  these,  which  was  destroyed  by  Hezekiah,  was 
in  the  form  of  a  serpent :  in  other  places  Jehovah  was 
worshipped  under  the  form  of  a  bull.  Where  an  image 
of  him  was  kept,  he  could  be  consulted  by  means  of  lots 
or  in  other  ways.  The  ark  or  chest  which  was  kept  at 
one  of  the  more  important  shrines,  represented  him 
most  fully ;  it  was  carried  into  battle,  and  he  was 
thought  to  go  with  it. 

Relig-ious  Conflict. — But  the  more  developed  worship 
thus  paid  to  Jehovah  after  the  settlement  in  Canaan, 
as  it  had  not  grown  out  of  the  religion  of  Jehovah,  did 
not  truly  express  its  spirit,  and  was  felt  by  those  who 
believed  most  thoroughly  in  the  national  god,  to  be  a 
wrong  way  of  serving  him.  If,  moreover,  the  Israelites, 
who  lived  scattered  and  far  apart  from  each  other 
among  the  older  inhabitants,  went  so  far  in  adopting 
Canaanite  practices,  there  was  a  danger  that  Israel 
would  forget  the  faith  which  had  made  him  a  nation, 
and  thus  part  entirely  with  his  character  and  nationality. 
A  contest  thus  arose,  which  continued  during  the  whole 
of  Israelite  history  down  to  the  exile,  between  the  few 
who  cared  for  Jehovah  only,  and  desired  to  see  the 
principles  of  his  religion  carried  out  purely  and  without 
reserve,  and  the  many  who,  while  also  professing  to 
follow  Jehovah,  saw  no  harm  in  worshipping  him  as 
other  gods  were  worshipped,  or  even  in  addressing  other 
gods  as  well  as  him.  This  struggle  is  represented  in 
the  histories  as  if  Israel  had  from  time  to  time  become 


1 86  History  of  Religion  part  hi 

entirely  apostate  from  its  own  faith.  But  it  is  clear  that 
Israel  never  forgot  Jehovah  so  far  as  to  be  incapable 
of  being  called  back  to  him.  The  call  was  generally 
a  call  to  war.  The  people,  having  forgotten  the  true 
source  of  their  strength,  and  so  lost  spirit  and  became 
a  prey  to  their  enemies,  were  summoned  by  one  in 
whom  the  spirit  of  Jehovah  was  burning  freshly,  to 
follow  him  to  battle  against  their  enemies.  The  spirit 
of  Jehovah,  thus  applied  anew  to  the  hearts  of  his 
people,  did  not  fail  of  its  effect.  The  wave  of  courage 
and  of  martial  ardour  spread  from  place  to  place,  from 
tribe  to  tribe,  and  soon  an  army  stood  in  the  field  which 
struck  with  the  old  vigour,  and  soon  shook  off  the  yoke 
of  the  oppressor.  Jehovah  thus  proved  himself  to  be 
Jehovah  Sebaoth,  i.e.,  in  the  most  probable  rendering 
of  the  phrase,  the  God  of  the  armies  of  his  people.  A 
religion  which  proved  itself  in  this  way  could  never 
cease  to  be  a  power  in  the  heart  of  the  nation  ;  even  if 
the  tribes,  dispersing  again  after  a  victory,  soon  seemed 
to  lose  touch  of  each  other,  and  to  be  sinking  deeper 
than  ever  in  the  surrounding  tide  of  Canaanite  life, 
yet  the  faith,  which  was  associated  with  all  the  highest 
moments  of  their  past  history,  and  was  the  secret  of  all 
their  victories,  could  not  die. 

The  Monarchy. — It  was  a  great  advance,  however,  in 
the  history  of  the  religion  of  Israel,  when  the  judges  or 
heroes  who  appeared,  at  distant  intervals  of  time  and  in 
different  parts  of  the  country,  to  summon  Israel  to  fight 
for  freedom  in  the  name  of  Jehovah,  were  succeeded  by 
the  monarchy.  This  was  a  step  which  those  most 
zealous  for  the  national  faith  warmly  approved,  and, 
indeed,  themselves  brought  about ;  the  monarchy  was 
founded,  in  the  case  of  the  first  two  kings,  on  religious 
enthusiasm.  The  religion  of  Jehovah  at  once  became 
the  state  religion,  and  a  more  satisfactory  worship  was 
formed  at  the  court.  The  permanent  union  of  the  tribes 
under  the  monarchy  soon  showed  Israel  to  be  possessed 
of  much  greater  force  than  could  have  been  imagined, 


CHAP.  XII  Israel  187 

and  within  a  century  the  people  of  Jehovah  formed  a 
considerable  power,  which  was  heard  of  in  all  ends  of 
the  earth.  Instead  of  a  set  of  scattered  tribes  they 
were  now  a  homogeneous  people,  conscious  of  a  great 
past  and  looking  forward  to  a  still  greater  future.  As 
they  passed  rapidly  from  barbarism  to  civilisation, 
Jehovah  shared  their  ri.se.  His  energy  had  always  been 
undoubted,  but  he  now  put  on  in  addition  all  the  settled 
attributes  of  kingly  power — he  was  a  great  god,  and  a 
great  king,  a  just  judge,  a  liberal  friend — all  his  doings 
were  wonderful.  He  had  chosen  Israel  for  his  people, 
and  by  a  series  of  mighty  acts  had  guided  and  preserved 
them,  and  made  them  great.  His  people  stood  in  a 
peculiar  position  in  the  world  ;  with  such  a  god  they 
must  rise  higher  still,  there  could  be  no  limit  to  what 
he  could  do  for  them.  ^ 

Relig"ion  not  Centralised. — We  must  not,  however, 
suppose  that  the  rise  of  Jehovah  to  a  great  position,  and 
the  institution  of  his  worship  at  the  court,  made  any 
great  or  sudden  change  in  the  religious  arrangements  of 
the  people  at  large.  While  the  worship  of  the  monarch 
went  on  at  Gibeon  or  at  Jerusalem,  the  great  shrines  at 
Bethel,  at  Dan,  and  at  Beersheba  were  still  frequented, 
and  the  sacred  places  throughout  the  land  remained  in 
honour.  Stories  indeed  were  told  to  show  that  they 
had  been  founded  by  the  patriarchs  for  the  worship  of 
their  god,  so  that  there  need  be  no  scruple  in  frequent- 
ing them.  The  worship  of  Baal  and  that  of  Jehovah 
went  on  at  these  places  side  by  side,  and  neither  could 
fail  to  be  influenced  by  the  other.  Sacrifice  was  guided 
by  more  than  one  principle:  on  the  one  hand  it  was 
a  common  meal  with  the  deity  ;  and  as  Jehovah  was 
thought  to  have  his  dwelling  in  Heaven,  his  part  of  the 
banquet  was  burned,  so  that  it  might  ascend  to  him  in 
the  column  of  smoke.  The  sacrifice  of  agriculturists, 
however,  naturally  turns  to  the  idea  of  presenting  to  the 
god,  with  joy  and  thankfulness,  a  part  of  the  gifts,  or 
the  first  or  best  part  of  the  gifts,  which,  as  lord  of  the 


1 88  History  of  Religion  part  hi 

soil,  he  has  bestowed.  The  idea  of  propitiation  or 
atonement  does  not  enter  into  the  ordinary  sacrifices  at 
this  time.  Jehovah  in  his  sterner  moods  may  demand 
more  awful  offerings.  As  we  see  from  the  story  of 
Abraham  offering  up  Isaac,  it  was  thought  that  Jehovah 
might  demand  human  sacrifice,  and  instances  of  such 
sacrifice  actually  occur  in  the  records.  Jephthah 
dedicates  his  daughter ;  after  a  war  the  best  of  the 
booty  is  offered  to  Jehovah,  and  Samuel  hews  Agag  in 
pieces  before  him.  But  such  occurrences  lie  quite  apart 
from  ordinary  worship,  which  is  of  a  joyful  character 
and  is  accompanied  by  merry-making  of  various  kinds. 
No  fixed  ritual  prevailed  throughout  the  country ;  the 
attempt  to  introduce  uniformity  came  much  later.  Every 
one  knew  how  to  sacrifice,  as  the  stories  of  Manoah  and 
of  Gideon  show ;  it  was  by  no  means  necessary  that 
a  priest  should  be  present.  The  functions  of  the  priest 
indeed  were  often  connected  with  other  matters  than 
sacrifice,  and  might  be  of  a  humble  description.  Eli 
with  a  few  attendants  was  the  guardian  of  the  ark  which 
was  the  symbol  of  the  presence  of  Jehovah.  A  young 
priest  was  engaged  by  Micah  for  ten  pieces  of  silver 
yearly  to  take  charge  of  his  collection  of  idols.  But  the 
f  most  important  duty  of  the  priesthood,  and  that  on 
which  their  influence  mainly  depended,  was  that  of 
consulting  Jehovah  and  ascertaining  his  will.  This  was 
done  by  some  sacred  object  in  the  charge  of  the  priest, 
and  various  objects  are  named  (Ephod  and  Teraphim 
are  images  of  deities  ;  Urim  and  Thummim  are  the  lots 
used  on  such  occasions)  which  possessed  this  virtue. 
The  priest  also  acted  as  a  judge  in  matters  brought  to 
him  for  decision,  and  thus  was  in  a  position  to  form  the 
unwritten  law  of  the  people,  and  to  set  up  principles  of 
conduct  which  came  in  course  of  time  to  be  regarded  as 
sacred.  The  priests'  "torah"  or  law  is  the  beginning 
of  the  Jewish  legislation,  and  we  see  from  the  humane 
and  kindly  provisions  of  the  earliest  codes  that  this 
important  function  was  discharged  in  no  unworthy  way. 


CHAP.  XII  Israel  189 

It  was  thus  that  Jehovah  acted  as  the  living  lawgiver 
of  his  people,  long  before  any  written  law  existed. 
With  his  character  as  a  warrior,  a  mighty  lord,  and  a 
giver  of  rich  gifts,  he  combines  from  the  first  that  of 
one  who  watches  over  the  conduct  of  his  people,  checks 
their  excesses,  and  is  willing  and  able  to  lead  them  on 
to  better  living.  This  fact  will  be  of  much  importance 
when  the  mind  of  the  people  expands  and  seeks  to 
understand  more  clearly  his  being  and  character. 

The  Prophets. — Israel,  like  other  nations  of  antiquity, 
had,  in  addition  to  the  priests  who  were  profession- 
ally connected  with  religion,  a  class  of  men  who  were 
organs  of  the  deity  not  on  account  of  their  position  but 
by  a  special  personal  gift.  The  inspiration  of  Jehovah 
appeared  in  early  times  in  somewhat  crude  forms. 
Bands  of  fervid  devotees  were  seen,  who  produced  in 
themselves  by  dance  and  song  an  ecstatic  enthusiasm, 
in  which  they  were  thought  to  become  the  organs  of 
the  deity.  These  men  lived  in  societies  or  guilds,  which 
were  found  in  Israel  for  several  centuries.  There  were 
such  prophets  of  Baal  as  well  as  of  Jehovah,  so  that 
the  phenomenon  is  not  specifically  Israelite.  What  we 
hear  of  them  does  not  always  give  us  a  lofty  idea  of 
their  character.  They  are  found  practising  magical 
tricks,  and  when  they  prophesy  they  all  say  the  same 
thing ;  sometimes  they  are  willing  to  prophesy  what  a 
king  wishes  to  hear. 

The  greater  prophecy  of  Israel  arose  out  of  such 
beginnings  as  these.  Israel  was  accustomed  to  expect 
to  hear  the  will  of  Jehovah  declared  by  a  speaker  of 
whom  the  spirit  had  laid  hold,  and  among  those  who 
came  forward  to  meet  this  expectation  there  appeared 
from  time  to  time  men  of  commanding  insight  and  of 
great  intensity  of  character.  The  name  "seer"  indicates 
the  nature  of  this  kind  of  prophecy.  The  seer  is  one  to 
whom  Jehovah  communicates  his  intentions  personally, 
perhaps  without  any  steps  having  been  taken  on  his 
part  to  place  himself  in  the  way  of  the  god.     He  sees 


190  History  of  Religion  part  hi 

visions  while  awake  and  in  his  ordinary  frame  of  mind, 
he  also  hears  what  others  do  not  hear ;  and  the  vision 
and  the  message  have  reference  to  the  future.  Things 
are  intimated  which  are  shortly  to  come  to  pass,  and 
they  are  things  concerning  the  state  or  the  monarchy : 
the  fate  of  Israel  is  the  burden  of  the  prophet's  intima- 
tion. Samuel's  seeing  led  him  to  institute  the  monarchy 
under  Saul.  The  prophet  Abijah  declared  for  the  division 
of  the  kingdom  into  two;  and  his  prophecy  was  not  vain. 
Elijah  foretold  the  downfall  of  the  house  of  Omri,  and 
Elisha  saw  to  the  accomplishment  of  that  prediction. 
The  prophets  we  see  were  a  great  power  in  public 
affairs,  and  were  able  in  important  crises  to  determine 
the  course  of  the  nation's  history.  Often  the  prophet 
stands  quite  alone,  and  in  opposition  to  the  court  and 
apparently  to  the  nation,  and  yet  his  words  have  a 
tendency  to  get  themselves  fulfilled ;  Jehovah's  word 
does  not  return  to  him  void.  At  other  times  the 
prophet  seems  to  have  many  sympathisers  among  the 
nation,  and  to  speak  as  the  mouthpiece  of  the  most 
earnest  section  of  the  community,  the  section  most 
devoted  to  Jehovah ;  and  in  these  cases  it  is  less 
wonderful  that  his  words  come  true.  When,  however, 
we  speak  of  the  prophets  as  a  whole,  the  expression 
is  a  loose  one ;  the  prophets  are  not  a  party  that 
always  acts  together,  nor  a  school  in  which  the  leader 
is  always  sure  of  a  following.  A  great  voice  sounds, 
perhaps  once  in  a  century  or  a  half-century ;  and  these 
voices  represent  the  true  tradition  of  Israelite  religion, 
and  develop  it  further.  In  the  time  of  Elijah  we  notice 
that  there  is  a  puritan  movement  in  Israel ;  a  number 
of  men  are  agreed  together  in  detestation  of  the  foreign 
worships  which  are  practised  at  court,  and  are  heartily 
agreed  in  wishing  to  bring  back  the  good  old  ways  and 
the  pure  worship  of  Jehovah  only.  And  when  Elijah 
speaks,  he  gives  voice  to  this  tendency  ;  he  claims  that 
everything  should  be  determined  by  religion  ;  no  con- 
siderations of  state  should  for  a  moment  stand  in  the 


CHAP.  XII  Israel  191 

way  of  the  pure  faith  of  Jehovah,  by  which  everything 
should  be  decided  ;  and  whatever  stands  in  the  way  of 
this  policy  is  dedicated  to  destruction.  This,  broadly 
speaking,  is  the  keynote  of  Hebrew  prophecy. 

When  we  come  to  the  canonical  prophets,  however, 
we  feel  that  there  is  a  great  deal  more  in  their  teaching 
than  the  bare  demand  that  everything  must  give  way  to 
the  requirements  of  religion.  A  great  change  has  taken 
place  in  their  world  of  thought.  It  is  no  less  than  that 
a  new  god  and  a  new  religion  have  announced  them- 
selves in  the  thinking  of  these  men.  They  do  not  say 
so  ;  they  are  not  aware  of  it,  and  yet  it  is  so. 

The  Old  Religion  National. — The  religion  of  Israel 
during  the  monarchy  is,  in  the  full  sense  of  the  term, 
a  national  one.  From  a  cluster  of  tribes  Israel  has 
become  a  nation,  and  has  begun  to  think  of  itself  as  a 
unity.  It  has  its  national  history,  its  national  rulers, 
as  other  nations  have.  In  their  nationality  it  cannot 
be  denied  that  the  Israelites  had  much  to  be  proud 
of;  nor  did  their  rapid  growth  in  wealth  and  power, 
which  gave  them  several  centuries  of  prosperity,  tend 
to  lesson  that  pride.  Now  as  they  have  their  own 
king,  they  have  also  their  own  god.  Jehovah  is  the 
god  of  Israel ;  Israel  is  the  people  of  Jehovah,  on  this 
they  were  all  agreed.  That  Jehovah  was  their  god 
did  not  prevent  them  from  believing  in  the  existence 
of  other  gods  :  Chemosh  was  the  god  of  Moab,  a  being 
not  very  unlike  Jehovah,  the  Baals  were  the  old  gods 
of  Canaan.  Jehovah,  of  course,  was  the  greatest  and 
strongest,  and  an  Israelite  should  worship  him,  in 
Canaan  at  least ;  but  there  was  no  great  harm  if  he 
worshipped  other  gods  too,  when  it  came  in  his  way 
to  do  so.  He  might  join  in  the  worship  of  Baal  in 
country  places ;  and  the  king  might,  without  doing  | 
any  harm,  set  up  the  images  of  the  gods  of  his  wives  ! 
beside  the  images  of  Jehovah  in  the  capital,  and  if  1 
many  of  his  subjects  joined  in  these  other  worships, 
it   was  but  natural.     In  this  way   a   great   variety   of 


192  History  of  Religion  part  hi 

gods  was  in  some  reigns  brought  together  from  different 
countries. 

Jehovah,  however,  was  the  special  god  of  Israel,  there 
could  be  no  doubt  of  that ;  Israel  was  specially  pledged 
to  him ;  and  he  on  his  side  was  pledged  to  Israel,  who 
was  entitled  to  look  to  him  for  help  in  every  emergency. 
Jehovah  had  no  other  people;  he  was  entirely  bound  up 
with  Israel,  he  must,  if  only  for  his  own  honour,  come 
to  the  aid  of  his  own  people  when  they  needed  him. 
He  never  could  permit  Israel  to  suffer  any  fatal  injury, 
such  as  deportation  to  a  foreign  country.  Religious 
faith  forbade  the  thought  that  such  a  thing  was  possible; 
if  Israel  was  destroyed,  where  would  Israel's  religion  be? 
It  was  utter  impiety,  therefore,  to  doubt  that  Israel  was 
safe,  that  Jehovah  watched  over  his  own  land  and  his 
own  people,  or  that  he  would  guard  them  from  any  fatal 
harm.  If,  on  the  other  hand,  as  was  too  often  the  case, 
Israel  had  to  submit  to  injury  and  insult  from  other 
peoples,  there  could  be  no  doubt  that  Jehovah  took 
notice  of  the  fact,  and  that  in  due  time  he  would 
set  things  right.  It  might  be  some  time  before  his 
attention  was  sufficiently  directed  to  the  case ;  he 
might  be  waiting  till  more  of  the  same  kind  of  occur- 
rences took  place  before  he  finally  interposed  ;  but  the 
time  would  come,  the  "  Day  of  the  Lord  "  would  arrive 
in  due  season,  when  the  spoilers  and  insulters  of  Israel 
would  be  dealt  with  according  to  their  deserts,  ard 
Israel  set  on  high  in  full  deliverance  and  peace. 

Criticism  of  the  Old  Religion  by  the  Prophets.— 
The  prophets,  impressed  more  deeply  than  the  people 
by  the  moral  character  of  Jehovah,  and  under  the 
pressure  of  great  national  dangers  and  calamities, 
attained  to  views  of  God  and  of  his  ways  so  different 
from  those  current  at  the  time  as  to  appear,  when 
first  produced,  most  unpatriotic  and  even  impious. 
In  their  character  of  seers  they  foresaw  with  clear- 
ness the  terrible  catastrophes  which  were  about  to 
burst  upon  their  people.     Amos  prophesies  that  Israel 


CHAP.  XII  Israel  193 

will  be  carried  away  captive  out  of  his  land  ;  Isaiah 
announces  the  same  thing  in  the  southern  kingdom, 
and  declares  that  only  a  remnant  shall  return.  These 
men  are  in  no  doubt  as  to  the  impending  political 
annihilation  of  Israel,  and  they  set  themselves  to  find 
some  reason  for  an  occurrence  so  portentous,  so  im- 
possible to  harmonise  with  ordinary  religious  faith. 
They  account  for  it  by  a  view  of  the  nature  of  Jehovah 
far  exalted  above  that  of  their  people.  He  is  punish- 
ing them  for  their  iniquities,  they  say,  he  is  so  righteous 
that  he  must  punish  sin,  and  he  must  punish  the  sin 
of  Israel  his  beloved  people  not  less  strictly,  but  more 
strictly  than  that  of  other  peoples.  As  a  husband 
whose  wife  has  gone  astray  must  subject  her  to 
discipline  before  he  can  receive  her  again  to  his  favour, 
so  Hosea,  made  a  prophet  by  such  a  domestic  afflic- 
tion, contends  that  Jehovah  cannot  but  deal  strictly 
with  Israel.  This  theory  of  the  meaning  of  the  im- 
pending calamities  is  supported  by  the  prophets  by 
those  denunciations  of  the  national  sins  which  give 
so  gloomy  a  complexion  to  their  works.  Among  the 
national  delinquencies  the  disorganisation  and  apparent 
wilfulness  shown  in  worship  have  a  prominent  place. 
Worship  is  not  what  the  service  of  Jehovah  ought  to 
be.  Other  beings  than  he  are  sought  after  ;  heathenish 
festivals  are  kept,  the  indecent  practices  of  heathen 
worship  are  introduced  into  that  of  Jehovah :  there 
is  no  seriousness,  no  dignity,  no  worthy  ord6r,  in  the 
acts  of  worship  that  are  done.  Any  place  does  for 
them,  and  many  of  the  places  used  are  quite  unfit, 
from  their  associations,  for  the  service  of  Jehovah. 
They  are  celebrated  more  as  wild  orgies  than  as 
solemn  approaches  to  the  deity. 

The  interests  of  the  prophets,  however,  do  not  centre 
in  ritual.  The  worship  of  other  gods  than  Jehovah,  or 
the  service  of  Jehovah  in  unfitting  ways,  they  could 
not  but  denounce,  but  they  have  no  positive  instruc- 
tions to  give  about  worship.      When  the  people  have 

N 


194  History  of  Religion  part  hi 

apparently  given  up  the  wrong  worships,  and  are 
applying  themselves  with  zeal  to  that  of  Jehovah,  seek- 
ing his  favour  by  austerities,  or  by  costly  offerings,  the 
prophets  are  no  less  severe  on  this  line  of  conduct. 
Every  one  is  familiar  with  the  passages  in  which  they 
apparently  denounce  sacrifice  altogether  as  a  thing  God 
has  never  asked,  and  by  which  Israel  cannot  hope  to 
win  his  favour.  These  passages  do  not  prove  that  the 
prophets  desired  the  entire  discontinuance  of  sacrifice ; 
they  merely  compare  sacrifice  with  another  line  of 
duty  which  is  said  to  be  vastly  more  important.  Not 
sacrifice  but  mercy,  not  sacrifice  but  to  do  justly,  and 
love  mercy,  and  walk  humbly  with  God, — is  the  burden 
of  these  utterances.  Even  more  than  by  the  irregu- 
larities of  worship,  the  prophets  are  shocked  by  the 
more  directly  moral  shortcomings  of  their  people. 
The  people  are  accused  of  all  the  acts  that  are  for- 
bidden in  the  decalogue  of  Exodus  xx.,  and  of  many 
offences  not  there  named.  Especially  are  the  prophets 
indignant  at  the  hardheartedness  of  the  rich  towards 
the  poor,  and  at  the  frequent  disregard  of  faith  and 
truth ;  oppression  and  bribery,  gluttony  and  other 
luxurious  excesses,  are  frequently  their  mark.  These 
most  of  all  are  the  sins  which  have  called  down  the 
divine  judgments ;  these  are  the  transgressions  which 
make  it  impossible  for  Jehovah  to  turn  away  the 
punishment  of  Israel  and  of  Judah.  He  is,  above  all 
things,  a  righteous  god,  who  loves  judgment  and  mercy, 
and  a  people  which  so  manifestly  fails  to  practice 
justice  and  mercy  cannot  continue  to  be  his  people ; 
he  must  destroy  them. 

The  prophets  therefore  declare  that  Jehovah  has 
decided  on  the  rejection  of  his  people.  This  shows 
that  they  have  advanced  to  a  new  conception  of  what 
Jehovah  is.  To  them  he  is  something  more  than  the 
mere  national  deity  indissolubly  linked  to  the  fortunes 
of  his  people,  pledged  to  advance  them  in  the  world, 
and  doomed  v/hen  they  fall  to  fall  himself  along  with 


CHAP.  XII  Israel  195 

them.  He  is  first  of  all  a  moral  ruler  ;  the  maintenance 
and  promotion  of  righteousness  is  far  more  to  him  than 
the  prosperity  of  any  single  people,  even  of  Israel. 
He  loves  Israel  it  is  true;  Israel  is  his  son,  whom  he 
loves,  the  wife  of  his  youth,  the  people  of  his  covenant. 
But  that  makes  it  the  more  and  not  the  less  necessary 
that  Israel  should  not  be  allowed  to  go  on  in  iniquity. 
Jehovah  can  be  no  partisan  of  a  people  that  does 
not  walk  according  to  his  laws.  Thus  the  prophets 
have  arrived  at  a  new  conception  of  Jehovah's  character, 
which  necessarily  unfits  him,  though  they  do  not  yet 
see  this,  for  the  role  of  a  national  god.  They  have 
identified  him  with  the  ideal  of  righteousness  and 
mercy,  and  in  so  doing  they  have  made  the  great 
step,  at  least  in  principle,  from  national  to  universal 
religion,  from  the  religion  that  is  bound  up  with  the 
history  of  one  particular  people,  and  cannot  pass 
beyond  them,  to  the  religion  which  is  capable  of  being 
understood  by  all  men,  and  fit  to  be  preached  to  all 
men  of  whatever  race. 

Appearance  of  Universalism. — To  the  deeper  view 
which  they  have  gained  of  the  character  of  Jehovah 
the  prophets  add  a  wider  and  higher  view  of  his 
relation  to  the  world,  and  to  the  various  nations  in 
it.  They  frankly  state  that  Jehovah  has  relations  to 
other  nations  than  Israel.  He  might  if  he  had  chosen 
have  taken  some  other  race  to  be  his  people ;  they 
were  all  at  his  disposal  and  he  regarded  none  of  them 
as  hostile.  He  is  not  dependent  on  Israel,  and  the 
inference  is  clear,  that  if  he  could  have  done  without 
Israel  at  first,  he  could  do  without  Israel  still,  were 
he  driven  to  that.  Israel  is  not  indispensable  to  the 
continuance  of  the  true  religion.  Jehovah  indeed  has 
a  position  far  above  that  which  Israelite  national 
thought  ascribed  to  him.  He  is  lord  not  of  one  nation 
only,  but  of  all  the  nations.  He  can  use  any  of  them 
as  his  instrument  when  and  as  he  chooses.  It  is  he 
who  has  brought  each  of  them  to  its  present  seat,  it 


196  History  of  Religion  part  hi 

is  he  who  is  directing  their  movements  now.  And 
for  what  end  does  he  wield  this  mighty  rule?  He  is 
governing  the  world  not  in  the  interests  of  one  nation 
only,  but  in  the  interests  of  righteousness.  He  is 
guiding  the  destinies  of  nations  so  as  to  bring  about 
an  end  which  he  has  fixed,  namely  the  establishment 
of  a  world-wide  kingdom  of  truth.  The  day  is  indeed 
coming  as  the  Israelites  believed  when  he  would  hold 
a  judgment  over  the  world,  only  let  Israel  beware 
lest  that  day  should  be  darkness  and  not  light  to 
them  ;  it  will  bring  about  the  punishment  of  sinners 
of  whatever  race.  An  end  is  to  be  made  of  sin  both 
in  Israel  and  in  other  nations,  that  a  new  world  may 
begin.  The  position  thus  given  to  Jehovah  is  clearly 
one  which  lifts  him  high  above  the  rank  of  a  national 
deity.  The  prophets  understand  with  growing  clearness 
that  Jehovah  is  the  creator  of  the  world,  and  the  author 
of  all  the  glories,  both  of  the  celestial  and  of  the 
terrestrial  frame.  The  Maker  of  the  ends  of  the  earth, 
and  the  Governor  of  all  the  nations,  though  he  has 
chosen  to  reveal  himself  to  one  particular  race,  cannot 
be  limited  to  them.  The  position  of  Monotheism  has 
been  attained.  The  earlier  prophets  speak  of  the  gods 
of  other  nations  as  if  they  really  existed,  though  for 
Israel  Jehovah  is  the  only  god,  but  by  degrees  the 
advance  is  made  to  the  position  that  these  beings  do 
not  exist  at  all,  and  are  simply  "  vanities  "  or  "  nothings." 
Instead  of  saying  that  Jehovah  is  the  greatest  among 
the  gods,  and  that  there  is  none  like  him,  these  preachers 
say  that  Jehovah  alone  is  god,  and  that  he  is  the  author 
of  all  that  exists  and  of  all  that  takes  place  in  the  uni- 
verse. A  god  has  been  unveiled  whom  all  beings  exist 
to  glorify,  and  whom  all  the  nations  of  the  earth  can 
confidently  be  summoned  to  praise. 

Ethical  Monotheism. — These  results  were  reached 
gradually :  there  is  a  great  difference  between  the 
teaching  of  Amos  and  that  of  Jeremiah.  And  it  must 
be  remembered  that  they  were  attained  not  as  other 


CHAP.  XII  Israel  197 

monotheisms  have  been,  by  philosophical  speculation, 
_but_  by  purely  moral  ways.  It  is  because  Jehovah  is 
supremely  just  and  holy,  that  he  grows  so  great.  The 
justice  and  holiness  which  are  seen  in  him  are  the 
strongest  of  all  ;  the  world  exists  for  nothing  else  but 
to  realise  them,  and  everything  that  stands  opposed 
to  them,  whether  in  Israel  or  in  any  other  nation, 
must  go  down  before  them.  It  is  in  this  way  that 
the  conclusion  is  reached  that  Jehovah  is  the  only 
God.  The  moral  ideal  must  be  one.  The  whole  of 
the  religion  of  the  prophets  is  governed  by  moral 
considerations.  God  asks  from  man  nothing  but 
goodness ;  the  true  sacrifices  are  those  of  the  heart 
and  conduct.  Man's  intercourse  with  God  is  to  be 
kept  up  as  that  of  an  affectionate  human  relationship, 
into  which  no  motives  either  of  force  or  of  commerce 
enter.  Although  God  is  so  just  and  holy,  he  is  perfectly 
placable,  and  ready  to  greet  the  approaches  which  are 
made  to  him.  It  is  absurd  to  spend  so  much  money 
and  toil  on  sacrifice,  when  the  happiest  relations  with 
God  can  be  attained  so  much  more  simply.  God  for- 
gives without  any  sacrifice ;  his  love  and  his  desire 
to  meet  with  love  surpass  all  that  human  relationships 
can  show ;  his  constancy  is  like  that  of  the  returning 
seasons,  or  of  the  stars.  He  yearns  over  Israel  as  a 
father  over  a  wayward  son,  and  will  leave  nothing 
undone  that  he  can  do  to  bring  his  son  back  to  him. 
He  will  alter  all  his  former  plans  to  bring  about  that 
result.  He  will  change  man's  nature,  and  give  him  a 
new  heart,  if  nothing  short  of  that  will  suffice ;  or  he 
will  change  his  own  procedure  entirely,  and  deal  with 
man  not  by  way  of  commandments,  but  by  way  of 
inspiration,  placing  his  law  in  man's  inward  part,  writing 
it  in  his  heart,  so  that  the  great  union  of  God  and 
man  may  be  attained,  which  he  desires. 

Individualism  of  the  Prophetic  Teaching". — Here  we 
must  pause  to  notice  another  great  advance  which  the 
prophets  have  been  led  to  make  in  religious  knowledge. 


198  History  of  Religion  part  hi 

Their  view  of  Jehovah  as  a  purely  moral  being,  and  of 
man's  relation  to  him  as  a  moral  relation,  like  that 
between  two  human  beings  who  have  to  live  together, 
such  as  a  husband  and  wife  or  a  father  and  son,  makes 
religion  less  a  matter  for  the  people  as  a  body,  more  a 
matter  for  the  individual.  When  religion  is  carried  on 
by  public  sacrifices  and  stately  festivals  and  ceremonies, 
then  it  is  the  people  as  a  whole  that  transacts  with 
God,  and  the  individual  need  feel  no  great  weight  of 
responsibility  in  the  matter.  But  if  God  asks  for  love, 
if  he  says  he  does  not  care  for  sacrifice,  but  insists  on 
love  and  devotion,  and  rather  than  not  have  it  will 
work  a  miracle  on  man's  nature,  then  the  individual 
is  addressed.  Every  one  who  has  any  love  to  offer 
feels  himself  appealed  to.  Only  in  his  own  heart  can 
any  one  know  whether  or  not  God's  desire  is  met ; 
every  one,  therefore,  who  understands  the  appeal 
becomes  personally  responsible  for  the  answer,  and 
religion  becomes  a  matter,  not  only  between  God  and 
the  people,  but  between  God  and  the  individual  as 
well.  Personal  religion,  therefore,  makes  its  appear- 
ance among  the  Jews  at  this  time.  Jeremiah  carries 
on  dialogues  with  God ;  prayer  is  met  with,  as  the 
outpouring,  not  of  public  needs  alone,  but  of  private 
feeling ;  the  soul  has  learned  that  it  is  called  to  a  life 
of  its  own  with  God,  and  not  merely  to  a  share  in  the 
life  of  the  nation  with  him. 

We  have  dwelt  at  some  length  on  the  ideas  of  the 
prophets ;  not  at  such  length,  indeed,  as  to  satisfy  any 
of  those  who  love  their  writings,  for  we  have  thrown 
together  in  one  view  what  belongs  historically  to 
different  centuries,  while  to  the  personalities  of  the 
prophets,  to  their  sublime  certainty  and  their  stupendous 
courage,  we  have  given  no  attention.  We  have  stated 
the  outlines  also  of  the  great  movement  of  thought  in 
which  advances  of  such  transcendent  importance  were 
made  in  religion.  They  are  advances  which  have  not 
been  lost,  but  which  we  still  enjoy.     If  it  is  the  gift  of 


CHAP.  XII  Israel  199 

the  Semitic  race  to  bring  the  thought  of  God  to  bear 
on  life  with  such  direct  practical  force  as  Aryan  religion 
never  by  itself  exerted,  we  must  look  with  profound 
veneration  on  those  Semitic  thinkers  who  applied  this 
great  force  in  the  service  of  a  God,  who  has  no  other 
nature  and  property  but  that  of  justice  and  love. 
Religion  thus  became  to  them  and  to  all  they  influenced 
an  engine  for  the  direct  promotion  of  justice  and  love 
among  men ;  and  we  do  not  think  the  less  of  the 
prophets  that  the  harvest  of  which  they  sowed  the  seed 
could  not  be  reaped  in  their  day. 

Prophecy  leads  to  no  Immediate  Reform.  —  The 
message  of  the  prophets  seems  at  first  sight  to  have 
been  delivered  long  before  the  world  was  ready  for  it. 
Even  the  practical  measures  which  can  be  traced  to 
their  influence  are  far  from  being  in  accordance  with 
their  ideas.  The  causes  of  this  we  have  already  to 
some  extent  seen.  The  prophets  were  not  practical 
reformers.  The  amendment  they  called  for  was  one 
to  be  realised  in  individual  lives  rather  than  in  public 
policy,  and  they  do  not  bring  forward  schemes  of  re- 
form which  they  urge  the  people  as  a  whole  to  adopt ; 
they  rather  fling  great  ideas  upon  the  mind  of  their 
nation,  and  leave  it  to  others  to  find  out  how  practical 
effect  may  be  given  to  their  teaching.  To  the  very 
end  of  the  Jewish  state  the  prophets  and  their 
sympathisers  appear  to  be  in  a  small  minority  of  their 
nation.  The  people  as  a  whole  is  unconverted,  the 
worship  of  idols  goes  on,  and  so  does  the  worship  of 
other  gods,  even  in  the  temple  at  Jerusalem.  It  has 
seemed  to  some  great  scholars  that  Israel,  as  a  whole, 
was  a  heathen  people  up  to  the  time  of  the  exile,  and 
still  needed  to  be  converted  to  the  religion  of  Jehovah. 
Kuenen  shows  ^  in  a  convincing  way  that  this  is  an 
exaggeration,  and  that  people  and  prophets  alike  held 
the  religion  of  Jehovah  to  be  the  true  religion  of  Israel ; 

'  Hibbert  Lectures,  ii. 


200  History  of  Religion  part  hi 

but  up  to  the  exile  that  religion  was  not  reformed  in 
the  way  the  prophets  desired. 

The  Reforms. — Yet  the  word  of  Jehovah  had  not 
returned  to  him  void  even  during  this  period.  A  con- 
siderable series  of  reforms  are  narrated  in  the  histories, 
and  attested  by  successive  codes  of  law  now  embodied 
in  the  Pentateuch.  These  show  that  the  prophetic  ideas 
had  gained  for  themselves  a  strong  party  among  the 
people,  and  that  in  several  reigns  the  court  was  under 
their  influence.  These  reforms  show  progress  in  two 
directions.  There  is  a  growing  desire  to  make  the 
worship  of  Jehovah  correspond  to  the  exalted  new 
conceptions  of  his  character  as  a  being  of  incomparable 
majesty  and  holiness  ;  and  there  is,  on  the  other  hand, 
a  rapid  growth  of  moral  sentiment ;  justice  and  kindness 
to  others  are  placed  more  and  more  in  the  forefront  of 
the  divine  requirements.  We  can  do  little  more  than 
name  the  passages  where  the  details  of  these  matters 
may  be  found.  The  reforms  of  Hezekiah  ( i  Kings  xviii.) 
did  not  last  long.  He  destroyed  a  celebrated  image  of 
Jehovah,  a  fate  which  other  images  may  have  shared, 
and  he  remodelled  the  worship  of  the  holy  places 
throughout  Judah,  so  as  to  remove  its  more  heathenish 
features,  and  concentrate  it  on  Jehovah  alone.  Manasseh, 
Hezekiah's  successor,  pursued  the  opposite  policy.  In 
his  reign  a  large  collection  of  strange  cults,  some  of 
them  perhaps  those  of  the  individual  tribes,  were 
brought  back  into  use ;  even  the  barbarous  rite  of 
human  sacrifice  was  established  at  Jerusalem,  and  the 
worship  of  Jehovah  became  more  intense  and  darker. 
The  shadow  of  the  Assyrian  is  upon  Israel,  and  as 
generally  happens  in  times  of  public  anxiety,  rites  long 
disused  are  imagined  to  have  a  specially  national 
character  and  a  peculiar  potency,  and  are  fetched  back 
from  oblivion.  The  reform  of  Josiah  (2  Kings  xxii., 
xxiii.)  was  more  thorough-going  than  that  of  Hezekiah. 
He  made  an  end  of  all  the  unseemly  worships  his  pre- 
decessor had  encouraged  at  Jerusalem,  so  that  nothing 


CHAP.   XII 


Israel  201 


but  the  direct  worship  of  Jehovah  was  left.  The 
strongest  step  he  took,  however,  was  that  he  attempted 
to  put  an  end  altogether  to  the  shrines  at  which  local 
worship  had  hitherto  been  conducted,  thus  making  a 
clean  sweep  of  the  idolatry  of  the  rural  districts.  All 
this  was  done,  we  are  told,  in  accordance  with  a  law- 
book which  had  been  found  in  the  temple  by  certain 
high  officials,  and  which,  after  duly  consulting  a 
prophetess  about  the  matter,  Josiah  brought  into 
operation,  and  solemnly  pledged  himself  and  his  people 
to  observe.  We  are  in  no  doubt  as  to  the  nature  of 
this  book.  The  book  of  Deuteronomy  prescribes  just 
such  reforms  as  Josiah  carried  out,  and  is  generally 
allowed  to  have  been  the  written  law  which  was  pro- 
mulgated on  this  occasion.  Now  Deuteronomy,  while  ^ 
incorporating  no  doubt  many  old  laws,  is  in  spirit  and 
effect  a  work  of  the  prophetic  school.  Its  moral  teach- 
ing and  its  exhortations  to  love  Jehovah,  and  to  be 
true  to  him  alone,  are  quite  in  the  manner  of  Jeremiah, 
who  was  living  in  the  reign  of  Josiah.  And  the  principal 
reform  of  Josiah,  namely,  the  suppression  of  the  local 
worships,  and  the  concentration  of  all  worship  at  the 
temple  of  Jerusalem  alone,  stands  in  the  ^forefront  ox 
the  special  laws  in  Deuteronomy.  Those  who  aimed 
at  the  reform  of  religion,  according  to  the  ideas  of  the 
prophets,  had  thought  this  out.  The  worship  of  the 
one  supreme  God  should  take  place,  they  had  con- 
cluded, at  one  place  only,  and  should  be  national  in 
its  character ;  the  whole  people  should  worship  the  one 
God  at  its  capital.  Provision  was  made  that  this  should 
not  imply  the  deprivation  of  the  dwellers  in  country 
districts  of  the  use  of  flesh  meat.  Formerly,  every  act 
of  slaughter  was  a  sacrifice,  and  it  was  only  in  connec- 
tion with  a  sacrifice  that  this  food  could  be  enjoyed. 
But  in  future,  animals  may  be  slaughtered  at  a  distance 
from  Jerusalem  for  food  only,  apart  from  any  connection 
with  sacrifice.  The  promulgation  of  Deuteronomy  is 
an   important   epoch   in   the   religion   of  Israel.     That 


202  History  of  Religion  part  hi 

work  is  the  first  sacred  book  of  Israel  ;  from  this  time 
forward  Israel  knows  the  will  of  Jehovah,  not  only  from 
the  prophet's  living  voice,  but  from  a  book  which  is  re- 
garded as  having  divine  authority.  This  principle  once 
introduced  could  not  fail  to  develop ;  to  Deuteronomy 
other  books  were  afterwards  added  as  part  of  the  same 
law,  though  in  reality  they  superseded  it,  and  it  thus 
proved  the  nucleus  of  the  whole  Jewish  canon. 

Earlier  Codes. — Deuteronomy  was  not  the  earliest 
law  drawn  up  under  prophetic  influence.  Leviticus 
xvii.  -  xxvi.  is  recognised  as  being  a  code  by  itself, 
and  is  an  earlier  attempt  in  the  same  direction  as 
Deuteronomy.  The  decalogue  contained  in  Deutero- 
nomy v.,  identical  in  the  main  with  that  of  Exodus  xx., 
is  of  earlier  origin  than  Deuteronomy  itself,  but  is 
also  a  prophetical  work.  It  deals  with  ritual  only  to 
the  extent  of  removing  certain  obstacles  to  a  right 
worship  of  God,  and  places  the  chief  weight  of  his 
requirements  in  the  fulfilment  of  the  natural  duties. 
An  earlier  decalogue  which  deals  principally  with  ritual, 
and  which  contains  an  early  prophetic  attempt  to  free 
the  worship  of  Jehovah  from  heathen  abuses,  is  found 
in  Exodus  xxxiv.  10-26.  The  oldest  legislation  of  all 
^  is  the  code  found  in  Exodus  xx.  22  to  xxiii.  33,  which 
goes  by  the  name  of  the  Book  of  the  Covenant.  It 
is  true  that  in  form  and  in  many  of  its  precepts  it  is 
identical  with  the  Code  of  Hammurabi  (2250  B.C.), 
and  so  bears  strong  testimony  to  Babylonian  influence. 
It  is,  however,  much  more  humane  than  that  old  code, 
and  in  many  particulars  is  independent  of  it.  As  it 
appears  in  Exodus  it  belongs  to  the  times  of  the  early 
canonical  prophets,  and  as  it  scarcely  deals  with  ritual 
at  all,  it  shows  the  just  and  humane  spirit  cultivated 
by  the  religion  of  Jehovah  in  an  agricultural  community. 

The  Exile. — The  reformation  of  Josiah  was  quickly 
undone  by  his  successor  on  the  throne,  and  there  was 
no  further  opportunity  for  a  reform  while  the  people 
remained  in  Palestine.     But   the   exile  did  not   cause 


CHAP.  XII  Israel  203 

the  friends  of  reform  to  abandon  their  ideas.  The 
prophets  had  foretold  the  exile,  and  had  maintained 
that  the  religion  of  Israel  would  not  be  destroyed  but 
rather  would  be  saved  by  it,  and  the  event  proved 
that  they  were  right  in  this  point  also.  The  exile 
cured  the  people  definitely  of  idolatry,  and  gave  them 
a  strong  grasp  of  the  idea  that  they  were  a  peculiar 
people,  called  to  a  work  which  no  other  people  could 
accomplish  or  indeed  understand,  namely  to  hold  aloft 
in  the  world,  and  for  the  benefit  of  the  world,  the 
true  religion.  This  conviction  forms  the  burden  of 
the  prophecy  of  the  Unknown  prophet  of  the  exile 
(Isaiah  xl.-lxvi.).  He  exalts  still  more  highly  than  his 
predecessors  the  name  and  power  of  Jehovah.  He  is 
the  Creator  of  the  ends  of  the  earth,  to  whom  the 
nations,  including  even  that  great  Babylon,  are  as  a 
drop  of  the  bucket,  to  be  flung  whither  one  will ;  it  is 
he  who  has  chosen  Israel  for  his  people  and  who  now 
comforts  Israel  for  the  sorrows  of  the  exile.  In  the 
great  drama  he  is  unfolding  in  the  earth  Israel  has  a 
principal  part  to  play.  Israel  is  called  to  make  known 
to  the  nations  who  do  not  know  him,  the  true  God.  It 
had  been  prophesied  before  that  the  heathen  nations 
would  come  to  Mount  Zion  to  ask  counsel  of  the  God 
of  Judah,  and  that  Jehovah  should  become  law -giver 
and  judge  over  them.  The  Unknown  enlarges  on  this 
theme  with  splendid  imagery,  and  strives  to  persuade 
the  people  to  make  this  cause  their  own,  and  to  rise 
to  the  responsibility  it  involves.  Israel  is  to  be  a  prince, 
a  leader  and  commander,  of  the  peoples.  The  Gentiles 
are  to  come  from  far  bringing  their  treasures  and  doing 
homage  to  the  people  of  the  true  faith.  If  Israel  as 
a  whole  is  not  fit  as  yet  to  discharge  this  duty  for  the 
world,  yet  there  is  an  inner  Israel,  a  faithful  elect  of 
the  people  who  sympathise  entirely  with  Jehovah's 
purposes  and  are  entirely  devoted  to  his  will.  This 
"  Servant  of  Jehovah,"  at  least,  has  risen  to  the  height 
of  his  calling ;  Jehovah's  spirit  is  in  him.     He  will  not 


204  History  of  Religion  part  iii 

fail  nor  be  discouraged  till  the  true  religion  is  established 
in  the  earth.  At  another  part  of  the  prophecy  the  fate 
of  the  Servant  is  seen  in  darker  colours.  He  is  subject 
to  ill  -  treatment  and  misrepresentation  of  all  sorts ; 
even  when  he  is  suffering  for  the  sake  of  others  he  is 
derided  and  despised  ;  nay,  more, — he  is  called  to  suffer 
martyrdom,  and  die  for  sins  not  his  own.  But  even 
so,  the  Servant  will  conquer  in  the  end.  He  will  know 
that  his  sufferings  have  not  been  in  vain ;  he  will  be 
the  means  of  leading  many  to  righteousness  and  will 
be  the  instrument  of  Jehovah  to  bring  in  the  true 
religion. 

The  Return.  The  Reform  of  Ezra.— Such  utter- 
ances could  not  fail  of  effect  on  the  nation  to  whom 
they  were  addressed,  and  when  the  Jews  came  back 
to  Palestine  they  were  undoubtedly  inspired  with  a 
new  sense  of  their  peculiar  national  mission.  They  at 
once  proceeded  to  show  that  they  were  to  be  a  people 
apart  from  others,  by  separating  themselves  rigorously 
and  even  cruelly  from  entanglements  with  the  surround- 
ing population.  They  also  at  once  set  up  the  worship 
of  Jehovah  as  the  sole  God  who  had  his  one  shrine 
at  Jerusalem.  Their  early  experiences  in  Palestine 
were  not  encouraging.  For  a  century  they  remained 
a  struggling  and  poor  community,  and  it  might  seem 
doubtful  if  they  would  prove  strong  enough  to  maintain 
their  separate  position,  and  to  hold  up  their  special 
testimony  to  the  world.  But  at  that  time  the  Jews 
who  had  remained  in  Babylon  came  to  their  aid. 
These  men  had  never  ceased  to  labour  along  with 
their  brethren  in  Palestine  for  the  advancement  of  their 
nation ;  and  in  particular  they  had  laboured  earnestly 
at  the  problem  of  worship,  and  the  result  of  their 
labours  was  a  religious  constitution  so  rigid  in  its  ideas, 
so  logically  worked  out  in  detail,  and  so  skilfully  incor- 
porating and  appropriating  to  itself  all  the  past  traditions 
and  usages  of  the  race,  that  it  might  almost  be  said 
to  be   strong   enough   to   stand   by   itself,   and   would 


CHAP.   XII 


Israel  205 


certainly  afford  to  the  people,  if  they  adopted  it,  the 
support  and  the  discipline  they  needed.  This  con- 
stitution was  introduced  by  Ezra,  the  priest  and  scribe, 
in  the  year  444  B.c.,^  when  he  read  in  the  ears  of  the 
people  at  Jerusalem  (Nehemiah,  viii.,  ix.)  the  new  law 
he  had  brought  with  him  from  Babylon  fourteen  years 
before,  and  had  waited  all  that  time  to  promulgate. 
The  new  law  of  this  period  was  what  is  called  the 
Priestly  Code ;  it  occupies  the  latter  part  of  Exodus 
and  a  large  part  of  Leviticus  and  Numbers  ;  and  the 
older  writings  are  skilfully  interwoven  with  it,  but  in 
general  it  may  easily  be  distinguished  by  its  tone  from 
the  work  of  earlier  periods.  Deuteronomy,  the  earliest 
law-book,  is  simply  tacked  on  to  it  as  if  it  were  a 
part  of  the  same  code,  though  in  reality  it  is  often 
inconsistent  with  the  latter  law.  The  result  is  the 
Torah  or  law,  or,  as  we  call  it,  the  Pentateuch,  or 
the  five  books  of  Moses  (Moses  being  regarded  by  a 
convenient  fiction  as  the  source  of  all  Jewish  laws). 
This  was  thenceforward  the  law  of  the  Jews. 

The  Jewish  religrion,  of  which  this  is  the  code,  is 
generally  distinguished  from  the  religion  of  Israel  which 
prevailed  down  to  the  exile ;  and  several  important  new 
principles  undoubtedly  make  their  appearance  at  this 
point.  This  chapter  may  fittingly  conclude  with  an 
enumeration  first  of  the  features  of  Jewish  religious  life 
connected  with  the  law  or  the  priestly  system,  and  then 
of  those  features  of  it  which  lie  outside  that  system. 

I.  The  priestly  religion  is  founded  on  a  sentiment 
which  forms  but  little  part  of  the  faith  of  early  peoples, 
namely  the  sense  of  sin.  The  prophetic  denunciations 
of  Israel's  backslidings  have  at  last  found  entrance,  and 
the  people  is  found  submitting  to  a  system  which 
implies  that  the  whole  of  its  past  history  was  sinful 
and  mistaken,  and  that  there  is  a  constant  need  for 

^  This  date  and  many  features  of  the  story  of  Ezra  and  the  return  have 
of  late  been  much  questioned.  See  "  Ezra  "  in  Encyclopcedia  Biblica.  The 
account  given  above  follows  Wellhausen. 


2o6  History  of  Religion  part  hi 

supplicating  forgiveness.  Every  prayer  begins  with  a 
long  confession  of  national  sin,  in  which  the  present 
generation  also  shares,  "  We  have  sinned  with  our 
fathers,"  they  say.  This  view  is  spread  over  the 
historical  books  in  the  sweeping  judgments  passed  on 
individual  monarchs,  on  periods  of  the  national  life, 
and  especially  on  the  whole  of  the  Northern  Kingdom 
(cf  Nehemiah  ix.).  The  old  confidence  in  the  presence 
of  Jehovah  with  his  people  has  now  departed.  The 
earlier  Israelites  never  doubted  that  Jehovah  was  in 
the  midst  of  them  ;  that  could  be  taken  for  granted 
except  when  events  proved  the  contrary.  But  now 
Jehovah  has  grown  greater  and  more  awful,  while  the 
people  have  become  painfully  aware  of  their  deficiencies 
and  cannot  assume  that  he  is  with  them,  but  must  take 
steps  to  secure  his  presence.  This  is  no  doubt  con- 
nected with  the  growing  sense  of  an  individual  position 
and  responsibility  in  religion.  To  the  nation  or  the 
tribe  it  is  natural  to  feel  that  its  cause  is  just  and  that 
its  God  is  with  it ;  but  the  individual,  thrown  upon  his 
own  inner  world  for  his  alliances,  is  less  apt  to  feel  that 
confidence.  Now  the  religion  preached  by  the  prophets 
is  essentially  one  for  the  individual.  Ezekiel  especially 
felt  himself  responsible  for  the  fate  of  individuals,  and 
laboured  to  awaken  his  fellow-countrymen  one  by  one 
to  a  sense  of  their  danger  and  responsibility  ;  he  taught, 
that  each  man  had  to  see  to  his  own  salvation,  that  each 
man  would  receive  the  fruit  of  his  own  acts.  All  this 
tends  to  a  deeper  feeling  and  a  more  anxious  mood  in 
religion,  and  helps  to  explain  how  the  sense  of  sin,  on 
which  religious  progress  at  its  higher  stages  depends 
so  much,  was  fixed  so  strongly  in  the  Jewish  mind. 
That  the  Jews  underwent  a  radical  change  in  their  dis- 
position is  proved  by  the  fact  that  they  submitted  to 
the  yoke  of  the  law :  for  it  may  be  questioned  if  any 
people  ever  sacrificed  their  natural  liberty  for  the  sake 
of  their  religion  to  such  an  extent  as  this  people  did. 
2.  The  divine  will  is  now  received  by  the  people  in 


CHAP.  XII 


Israel  207 


the  shape  of  a  sacred  book.  They  cease  to  look  for 
the  living  voice  of  prophecy,  and  come  to  think  that 
God  has  given  them  in  the  Torah  a  perfect  and  com- 
plete revelation.  The  book  takes  the  place  of  the 
prophet,  and  in  time  also  to  some  extent  of  conscience. 
A  man  ceases  to  think  for  himself  what  is  right  and 
good,  and  only  asks,  What  does  the  law  say?  It  is  true 
that  a  great  part  of  the  book  is  taken  up  with  ritual, 
with  which  the  ordinary  individual  has  not  much  to  do, 
but  he  also  believes  that  the  whole  of  his  own  duty  is 
to  be  found  there  in  it,  as  is  no  doubt  the  case.  We 
see  from  the  119th  Psalm  how  beautiful  a  form  religion 
may  assume  even  under  these  terms,  when  the  book  in 
question  is  felt  to  be  a  spiritual  treasure,  and  to  speak 
the  words  of  a  living  God  ;  but  the  system  of  a  book- 
religion  has  in  it  the  germs  of  very  different  fruits. 
The  sacred  book  is  believed  to  be  an  exhaustive 
directory  of  conduct ;  but  to  make  it  apply  to  the 
various  cases  that  arise  in  practical  life  it  has  to  be 
interpreted,  and  deductions  have  to  be  drawn  from  it. 
It  thus  comes  to  give  many  a  direction  which  does  not 
appear  on  the  surface.  The  secondary  law,  or  "  tradi- 
tion," is  thus  founded,  a  system  which  calls  for  the 
services  of  a  special  class  of  students.  The  scribes, 
who  interpret  the  law  and  apply  it  to  life,  obtain  great 
influence  and  become  the  virtual  rulers  of  the  nation. 
While  no  doubt  guided  in  the  main  by  the  noble  spirit 
of  their  religion,  they  are  led  by  their  system  into  many 
absurdities,  and  their  casuistry  even  becomes  at  times 
immoral.  They  afford  the  classical  example  of  the 
results  which  flow  from  the  doctrine  of  verbal  inspira- 
tion, thoroughly  worked  out ;  and  the  life  of  the  Jews 
under  them  becomes  highly  unnatural  and  artificial, 
and  tends  to  occupy  itself  with  the  husk  instead  of  the 
kernel  of  religion. 

3.  The  principal  part  of  the  divine  will,  as  expressed 
in  the  law,  is  that  connected  with  sacrifice.  Sacrifice 
occupies  the   central    place   in   the   book,   and    in   the 


2o8  History  of  Religion  part  hi 

history  it  records.  In  this  book  the  temple  service, 
thinly  disguised  as  the  service  of  the  tabernacle  in  the 
wilderness,  is  set  forth  as  the  great  end  and  aim  for 
which  God  created  the  world,  settled  the  nations  in  it, 
and  called  Israel  to  be  a  people.  The  ritual  which  was 
observed  from  the  exile  to  the  destruction  of  Jerusalem 
may  be  studied  in  Exodus  and  Leviticus.  We  read  of 
orders  and  companies  of  priests  who  offer  daily  and  other 
sacrifices  according  to  a  rule  in  which  the  smallest  details 
are  carefully  arranged,  sacrifices  in  which  little  of  the 
old  cheerful  common  meal  now  lingers,  but  which  are 
mostly  of  a  purificatory  or  piacular  character.  The 
ritual  of  sacrifice  would  not  appear  to  an  outward 
observer  to  differ  very  much  from  that  in  use  among 
the  Greeks  or  Romans ;  the  Jews  certainly  conducted 
it  on  a  larger  scale.  What  end  precisely  was  aimed  at 
in  it,  the  Jew  would  have  found  it  perhaps  hard  to  say. 
It  was  done,  he  would  say,  because  the  law  so  ordered 
it,  and  the  law  must  be  obeyed  even  if  one  did  not  quite 
understand  what  was  enjoined.  The  daily  sacrifice 
removed  the  impurity  of  the  temple  staff,  and  enabled 
the  people  to  be  sure  that  the  favour  of  the  deity 
continued  with  them.  Many  sacrifices  aimed  at  the 
removal  of  particular  sins ;  thankfulness  also  was  ex- 
pressed in  them,  and  other  feelings  may  also  have 
ascended  with  the  smoke  from  the  altar.  To  Jews 
living  at  a  distance  the  sacrifice,  which  could  be  offered 
nowhere  but  at  Jerusalem,  was  the  chief  symbol,  the 
great  mystery,  of  their  faith. 

4.  The  notion  of  holiness  is  closely  connected  with 
worship.  Things  and  persons  are  holy  which  belong 
to  Jehovah,  and  are  withdrawn  from  common  use. 
These  it  is  dangerous  to  touch  unwarily.  Jehovah  is  an 
unapproachable  being ;  the  high  priest  may  come  into 
the  innermost  part  of  the  temple,  but  only  once  a  year, 
and  no  one  else  may  come  there ;  the  priests  may  enter 
the  Holy  Place,  but  not  the  people.  To  speak  lightly 
of  the  temple  was  a  crime  the  Jews  could  not  forgive. 


CHAP.  XII  Israel 


209 


The  Sabbath  was  the  Lord's  day  ;  man  must  not  attend 
on  it  to  his  own  worldly  concerns.     The  deity  is  sur- 
rounded with  dread  to  an  unparalleled  extent ;  all  that 
belongs  to  him  is  to  be  regarded  with  awe.     Connected 
with  the  notion  of  holiness  is  that  of  purity.     In  the 
later  Persian  religion  the  distinction  has  always  to  be 
anxiously  remembered  by  the  believer  between  what 
belongs  to  the  good  spirit  and  what  has  fallen  under 
the  power  of  the  evil   spirit.     The   Jew,   also,    who  is 
called  to  be  holy  and  separate  from  other  men,  lives 
in    constant   dread    lest    he    should    touch   something 
unclean,    and    so    forfeit    his    own    purity.       There    are 
clean  animals,  and  unclean    ones  which  he   must  not 
eat ;    various  washings  of  the  hands   and   of  domestic 
utensils  are  needed   in  order  to   keep  up  the  state  of 
purity  ;    many  trades  involve    contact  with  substances 
which  make  purity  almost  impossible.     Above  all,  it  is 
defiling  to  eat   what  a  heathen  has  cooked,  or  to  sit 
at  the  same  table  with  heathens.     Thus  the  Jew  was 
confirmed  in  the  belief  of  his  own  superiority  to  men 
of  other  races ;    and  was   prevented  by   many  barriers 
from  mingling  with  them,  or  even  regarding  them  as 
brethren.     His  circumcision,  his  Sabbath,  his  laws  of 
purity,  his  peculiarities    of  diet,   the  absolute  impossi- 
bility  of  his   eating    along    with    Gentiles,   kept   him 
separate,  and  helped  to  nourish  in  him  the  spirit  of 
haughtiness   and    exclusiveness.      The    accepted    wor- 
shipper of  Jehovah   is,   with   the   early    prophets,   the 
man  who  is  morally  sound,  who  has  curbed  his  passions 
and  his  selfish  impulses  ;  with  the  later  Jew  that  may 
still  be  the  case,  but  there  are  also  a  number  of  indis- 
pensable preliminaries  of  which  the  prophets  certainly 
did  not  dream.     The  man  who  would  go  up  to  the  hill 
of  Jehovah  must  be  one  who  has  not  eaten  shell-fish  or 
pork,  nor  opened  his  shop  on  the  Sabbath,  nor  touched 
a  dead  body,  nor  used  a  spoon  handed  to  him   by  a 
Gentile  without  washing  it.     How  all  this  unfitted  the 
Jewish  people  to  be  a  missionary  of  the  pure  religion, 

O 


2IO  History  of  Religion  part  m 

and  how  adverse  the  whole  Levitical  system  was  to 
the  earnest  apprehension  of  that  reh"gion  no  less  than 
to  its  diffusion,  the  New  Testament  amply  shows.  But 
it  kept  the  people  separate  from  the  world  and  constant 
to  their  faith  amid  even  the  greatest  temptations  and 
the  severest  persecutions,  and  so  enabled  them  to  pre- 
serve the  precious  treasure  committed  to  them  till  the 
time  should  come  when  the  world  was  to  receive  it  from 
their  hands. 

Heathenish  Elements  of  Judaism. — In  the  system 
we  have  sketched,  in  which  the  prophetic  teaching  was 
hardened  into  a  ritual  and  a  law,  there  are  various 
elements  which  do  not  belong  to  an  advanced  stage 
of  religious  progress.  While  the  sacrificial  ritual,  not 
outwardly  exalted  above  heathenism,  is  to  some  extent 
redeemed  by  the  motives  which  enter  into  it,  the  great 
system  of  clean  and  unclean  rests  on  no  rational  basis, 
and  resembles  the  set  of  taboos,  which  no  one  can 
explain,  of  a  savage  tribe  ;  and  the  reduction  of  daily 
life  under  a  set  of  minute  and  troublesome  rules,  shows 
the  devotion  more  than  the  enlightenment  of  those 
who  submitted  to  it.  There  was  a  necessity  that  the 
vessel  should  be  so  narrow  and  so  hard  which  was  to 
keep  the  wine  of  Jewish  religion  from  being  mixed 
with  other  liquids,  but  the  vessel  itself  belongs  to  the 
rude  and  early  world.  In  the  Jewish  religion  of  this 
time  there  are  far  different  elements,  which  point 
forward  and  not  backward,  and  in  which  the  future 
course  of  religious  progress  is  clearly  anticipated.  If 
his  temple  ritual  was  crude,  and  if  his  law  pursued 
him  into  every  one  of  his  actions,  the  thoughts  of  the 
Jew  were  free;  the  truths  which  were  unfolding  their 
riches  in  his  mind  were  sufficient  compensation  for 
much  outward  restraint,  and  the  fair  world  of  imagina- 
tion was  open  to  him  in  which  the  past  clothed  itself 
with  legend  and  the  future  with  splendid  hopes. 

Spiritual  Elements. — The  period  after  the  exile  is 
that  of  the  composition  of  the  Psalms.     Many  of  these 


CHAP.   XII 


Israel  211 


poems  may  have  been  written  earlier ;  many  were 
undoubtedly  written  at  this  time,  and  the  belief  gains 
ground  that  the  Psalmist  came  after  the  prophet,  and 
adopted  for  popular  use  the  prophet's  ideas.  In  the 
Psalter  we  hear  the  thrill  of  joy  and  triumph  as  the 
great  truths  of  theism  come  to  be  grasped  as  certainties. 
The  congregation  now  utters  in  song  what,  when  the 
prophet  first  announced  it,  so  few  had  courage  to 
believe,  that  Jehovah  is  king,  that  he  rules  over  the 
nations,  that  he  is  far  above  all  the  gods,  nay,  that 
there  is  no  other  God  than  he.  The  joy  of  having 
embraced  this  thought,  of  having  escaped  from  all 
confusion  with  regard  to  the  powers  that  rule  the 
world,  and  of  seeing  all  things  in  this  splendid  light, 
finds  manifold  expression.  The  believers  delight  them- 
selves anew  in  the  worship  of  Jehovah,  and  see  fresh 
beauties  in  his  courts,  and  in  the  service  of  him  there ; 
they  delight  in  his  word  in  connection  with  every  part 
of  their  experience.  They  understand  the  world  as 
they  never  did  before,  since  it  is  his  work,  and  praise 
the  Creator  as  they  follow  the  whole  process  of  creation. 
New  lights  open  to  them  on  the  history  of  their  race, 
new  solutions  occur  to  them  of  the  moral  difficulties 
they  have  felt,  as  they  saw  the  wicked  prosper  and 
the  good  cast  down.  There  is  very  little  about  ritual 
in  the  Psalms ;  it  is  regarded  chiefly  as  an  offering  of 
thanks  and  praise  to  Jehovah  for  his  wonderful  works, 
and  for  his  mercies ;  and  it  is  viewed  ideally  as  an 
act  of  homage  in  which  not  only  the  immediate 
worshippers,  but  all  nations  on  the  earth  may  be  con- 
ceived as  taking  part.  On  the  other  hand,  the  observ- 
ance of  Jehovah's  moral  requirements,  and  implicit 
trust  in  him  while  one  seeks  to  do  his  will,  is  insisted 
on  again  and  again,  as  the  true  method  to  please  him, 
and  to  obtain  his  protection  against  all  dangers.  There 
are  few  moods  of  the  religious  life  that  are  not  repre- 
sented in  the  Psalms :  penitence,  intellectual  perplexity, 
domestic  sorrow,  feebleness,  loneliness,  the  approach  of 


212  History  of  Religion  part  m 

death,  the  excitement  of  great  events,  the  agony  of 
persecution,  quiet  contemplation  of  nature,  each  has 
its  word.  The  imprecations  of  some  of  the  Psalms 
show  a  trait  of  the  national  character  without  which 
the  picture  would  be  incomplete.  It  may  be  in  part 
extenuated  by  the  consideration  that  in  these  Psalms 
it  is  the  community  that  speaks,  and  that  the  enemy 
of  the  good  cause  deserves  less  forbearance  than  the 
private  adversary.  Whether  the  Psalms  in  general 
are  to  be  conceived  as  uttered  by  the  commuuity 
rather  than  as  private  outpourings,  is  a  question  not 
yet  decided.  In  either  sense  the  Psalms  have  been  used 
and  are  still  used  as  the  hymn-book  of  Christendom, 
as  well  as  of  the  Jews ;  and  it  will  always  be  a 
wonderful  feature  in  the  religion  of  Israel,  that  so 
soon  after  the  truth  of  the  one  God  was  discovered  by 
the  prophets,  it  received  a  form  of  expression  which 
has  proved  fitted  for  the  use  of  every  nation  in  the 
world. 

The  Jews  after  the  exile  are  in  possession  of  a  new 
form  of  religrious  association  which  belongs  to  a 
high  stage  of  growth.  The  temple  worship  is  one  in 
which  the  ordinary  layman  has  no  part,  or  only  an 
occasional  part  to  play.  The  priest  does  everything 
in  it ;  even  the  singing  of  Psalms  is  done  by  choirs 
of  priests.  And  the  dweller  in  the  country  might 
rarely  be  a  witness  of  these  great  solemnities.  But  we 
know  that  in  the  Maccabean  period  the  country  was 
covered  with  synagogues :  with  buildings,  that  is  to 
say,  where  the  surrounding  population  met  on  the 
Sabbath,  and  perhaps  on  other  days  as  well,  to  join 
in  common  prayer,  and  to  hear  lessons  of  Scripture 
and  exhortations.  Some  local  religious  meeting  was 
necessary  ;  an  earnest  people  could  not  do  without 
it,  and  the  local  sacrifices  were  now  of  the  past.  But 
the  synagogue  service  marks  a  great  advance  in  the 
religious  position  of  the  Jews.  They  can  now  meet 
without  any  act  or  sacrament  which  they  have  to  do 


CHAP.  XII  Israel  213 

in  common,  to  engage  in  purely  intellectual  religious 
exercises.  The  same  advance,  as  we  shall  see,  took 
place  in  Greece  about  the  same  time ;  what  moral  or 
religious  furtherance  they  wanted,  the  earnest  there 
began  to  seek  from  the  lectures  of  philosophers.  The 
synagogue,  however,  was  a  territorial  institution ;  all 
the  Jews  in  the  neighbourhood  came  to  its  services. 
It  kept  them  acquainted  with  the  law  which  otherwise 
they  might  have  forgotten,  and  also  with  the  writings 
of  the  prophets,  which  were  regularly  read,  and  thus 
strengthened  the  bonds  which  held  all  Jews  together, 
in  the  past  history  and  in  the  growing  hopes  of  their 
race. 

The  National  Hopes. — Judaism  becomes  more  and 
more,  as  befits  a  faith  of  which  prophets  are  the 
principal  exponents,  a  religion  of  hope.  Debarred  by 
their  subjection  under  successive  heathen  powers  from 
political  activity,  and  keenly  aware  of  their  outward 
humiliation,  the  Jews  turn  to  an  ideal  world  in  which 
they  are  free.  The  prophets  had  spoken  of  a  judgment 
in  which  Jehovah  would  judge  the  whole  world,  of  a 
happy  time  when  Israel  would  be  at  peace  from  all  his 
enemies,  and  God  and  people  would  dwell  together  in 
full  communion  ;  and  when  the  land  of  Israel  would 
become  the  religious  capital  of  the  world.  They  had 
added  to  their  picture  features  even  more  ideal,  and 
had  declared  that  the  conflicts  of  external  nature 
would  cease,  the  wild  animals  would  grow  tame  and 
friendly,  all  physical  as  well  as  all  moral  evil  would 
disappear.  It  was  in  this  world,  not  in  a  remote 
region  or  in  the  land  beyond  death,  that  all  this  was 
to  be  realised.  Jerusalem  is  the  centre  ot  the  picture 
and  the  Jewish  nation  stands  in  the  foreground  of  it 
as  the  chosen  people  of  the  God  of  all  the  world. 
Now  these  predictions,  which  with  the  prophets  are 
vague  and  idealised,  were  taken  by  the  Jews  always 
more  seriously  and  worked  out  in  detail.  After  the 
prophet  comes  the  apocalyptic  writer,  such  as  Daniel 


2T4  History  of  Religion  part  in 

(the  Apocalypse  of  the  New  Testament  belongs  to 
the  same  class  of  literature),  who  is  able  to  give 
the  exact  course  of  the  history  which  is  to  lead  up 
to  the  final  judgment,  to  fix  its  precise  date,  and  to 
give  many  details  of  the  ultimate  state  of  affairs. 
These  "revelations,"  which  were  written  generally  to 
-comfort  the  Jews  in  their  trials  and  to  encourage  them 
to  steadfastness  in  persecution,  were  very  popular.  It 
is  true  that  they  nourished  the  national  pride,  and 
enabled  the  Jew  to  feel  himself  superior  to  a  world 
in  which  he  occupied  outwardly  no  great  position ; 
but  on  the  other  hand  the  hopes  they  fed  were  not 
necessarily  unspiritual ;  at  the  Christian  era  we  find 
it  to  be  a  mark  of  the  most  genuine  piety  that  one 
should  be  "  waiting  for  the  redemption  of  Israel."  At 
this  period  the  national  hope  was  occupied  with  the 
figure  of  a  Messiah,  a  God-sent  Deliverer,  whose  coming 
was  to  be  the  prelude  to  the  establishment  of  the 
divine  kingdom.  We  learn  from  the  Gospels  what 
various  ideas  were  entertained  by  the  Jews  of  the 
first  century  about  this  "coming  one,"  and  how  little 
Jesus  Christ  was  felt  to  answer  to  the  common 
expectation. 

A  few  words  must  be  said  of  Jewish  beliefs  concern- 
ing the  other  world.  While  there  are  traces  of  an 
old  ancestor  -  worship  in  the  earlier  parts  of  Jewish 
history,  no  belief  of  the  kind  had  much  importance  in 
Israel.  The  Jews  shared  the  general  belief  of  the 
early  world  that  the  dead  continued  in  a  shadowy 
V  existence  without  any  power  for  action.  They  have 
an  under-world,  Sheol,  where  the  dead  are ;  Isaiah  has 
a  magnificent  description  of  the  dead  kings  sitting  on 
thrones  together  in  Sheol  and  rising  up  to  greet  a 
newcomer  who  was  a  great  potentate  on  earth,  with 
the  words  "  Art  thou  also  become  weak  as  we  ?  Art 
thou  become  like  unto  us  ?  "  The  dead  are  conceived 
as  continuing  in  a  weak  and  unsubstantial  reflection 
of  their  former  selves.     They  can  be  fetched  up  to  the 


CHAP.  XII  Israel  215 

earth  by  magic  arts  to  tell  the  future,  but  this  was 
strictly  forbidden  at  a  very  early  time.  The  Psalms 
and  other  later  books  contain  many  plain  denials  that 
man  has  any  continuance  to  look  for  after  death.  The 
religion  of  the  Old  Testament,  as  has  often  been  said, 
is  for  this  life.  God's  rewards  are  to  be  looked  for 
before  death ;  once  gone  to  the  grave  one  can  no 
more  enjoy  God's  bounty  or  give  him  thanks.  God's 
kingdom  of  the  future  is  also  a  kingdom  of  this 
world  ;  Jerusalem  is  its  capital,  and  nature  is  to  be 
transformed  for  it.  In  the  later  period  of  Jewish 
history,  however,  the  hope  of  the  future  which  has 
been  so  entirely  abandoned,  which  Job,  for  example, 
in  an  early  chapter  puts  so  peremptorily  away  from 
him,  creates  itself  afresh  in  a  new  form.  In  the  time 
of  Christ  the  Jews  believe,  as  a  matter  of  course,  that 
men  will  rise  again.  It  has  been  contended  that  the 
Jews  derived  their  later  doctrine  of  a  future  life  from 
their  contact  with  Persia,  but  it  is  not  necessary  to 
account  for  it  in  this  way.  It  arose  naturally  among 
the  Jews  in  more  ways  than  one.  The  individual 
believer  like  Job,  -entirely  sure  of  his  own  innocence, 
and  feeling  that  he  was  doomed  to  die  of  his  disease 
without  any  vindication  in  this  life,  claimed  that  an 
opportunity  should  be  found  beyond  the  grave  to 
pronounce  the  sentence  which  a  just  God  could  not 
omit  to  give.  In  Daniel  xii.  it  is  foretold  that  men 
of  conspicuous  virtue  and  men  of  conspicuous  wicked- 
ness will  have  a  resurrection — the  former  to  share  the 
glories  of  the  kingdom  from  which  as  teachers  and 
martyrs  they  could  not  be  wanting,  the  latter  to 
receive  their  punishment.  And  as  prophets  who  have 
been  long  dead  are  expected  to  return  to  the  earth, 
the  gate  of  death  is  not  so  firmly  closed  as  formerly 
and  the  belief  in  a  future  life  easily  became  current. 
Thus  Judaism  comes  to  be  a  religion  full  of  con- 
tradictions, and  could  not  as  a  whole  pass  to  other 
nations.      The   temple   and   the   synagogue   represent 


2i6  History  of  Religion  part  iii 

opposite  principles  of  worship.  The  Jew  feels  him- 
self to  be  entrusted  with  a  world-religion,  and  yet 
shuts  himself  up  in  such  exclusiveness  as  to  draw 
upon  himself  the  hatred  of  all  peoples,  and  to  be 
charged  in  turn  with  hatred  of  the  human  race.  A 
religion  of  faith  and  love  consorts  with  a  religion  of 
rules  and  limitations.  If  the  faith  of  Israel  was  to 
fulfil  its  mission  to  the  world  it  was  necessary  that 
some  one  should  come  who  could  purge  this  threshing- 
floor,  burning  the  chaff  and  gathering  up  the  wheat 
to  be  the  seed  of  the  progress  of  mankind. 


Books  Recommended 

The   Books   of   the   Old   Testament,    including   the   Apocrypha,    in   the 

Revised  Version. 
The  Histories  of  Israel  ;  Ewald,  Kuenen,  Wellhausen,  Stade. 
Robertson   Smith's    The    Old   Testament    in    the  Jewish    Church,    and 

articles  in  the  EncyclopcEdia  Britannica. 
Smend's  Alttestamentliche  Religionsgeschichte. 
Stade,  Biblische  Theohgie  des  Alien  Testatnents,  1905. 
For  a  criticism   of  the   critical  historians  the   reader  may  consult   The 

Early  Religion  of  Israel,  by  Prof.  James  Robertson. 
Prof.  Valeton,  Die  Israeliten,  in  De  la  Saussaye. 

Schiirer,  History  of  the  Jewish  People  in  the  Time  of  Christ,  1885-90. 
Kantzsch,  "  Religion  of  Israel,"  in  Dictionary  of  the  Bible,  vol.  v. 
E.J.  Foakes-Jackson,  The  Biblical  History  0/ the  Hebrews,  Second  Edition. 


CHAPTER   XIII 

ISLAM 

In  chronological  order  Islam  stands  last  of  all  the  great 
religions  ;  it  appeared  six  centuries  after  Christianity,  and 
Christian  ideas  enter  into  it.  It  is,  however,  so  essenti- 
ally Semitic  that  it  can  only  be  understood  aright  if 
studied  in  connection  with  the  group  now  occupying 
our  attention.  In  Islam  Semitic  religion  opens  its  arms 
to  embrace  mankind,  and  accomplishes,  in  a  fashion, 
the  destiny  to  which  Judaism  was  invited,  but  which 
Judaism  failed  to  realise  till  it  was  transformed  in 
Christianity.  In  Islam  Semitic  religion  is  not  trans- 
formed, but  enters  in  its  own  stern  and  uncompromising 
character  into  the  position  of  a  universal  faith. 

This  religion  sprang  up  and  entered  on  its  career 
of  conquest  with  startling  suddenness,  and  even,  some 
scholars  hold,  without  any  natural  preparation  for  its 
coming  in  the  country  of  its  birth.  The  Arabs  called 
the  period  before  Islam  the  "  time  of  ignorance  " ;  in 
that  period  they  considered  their  race  had  no  history ; 
the  new  religion,  when  it  arose,  had  made  a  clean  sweep 
of  all  that  had  gone  before,  and  had  caused  a  new  world 
to  begin.  The  labours  of  Arabic  scholars  have,  how- 
ever, done  something  to  dispel  the  mists  which  hung 
over  early  Arabia,  and  it  is  possible  both  to  give  a 
much  more  satisfactory  sketch  than  formerly  of  the 
earlier  religion  of  the  Arabs,  and  to  discern  to  some 
extent  the  processes  which  had  unconsciously  been  pre- 
paring for  the  advent  of  a  higher  and  stronger  faith. 

217 


2i8  History  of  Religion  part  hi 

Arabia  before  Mahomet. — The  Arabs  of  the  central 
peninsula  in  the  times  before  Mahomet  were  not  a 
nation  but  a  set  of  tribes — mostly  nomadic,  but  some 
of  them  settled  in  cities,  who,  while  united  by  language, 
custom,  and  traditions,  had  no  central  government  or 
organisation.  The  desert  which  they  inhabited,  as  it 
admitted  no  cultivation,  kept  human  life  uniform  and 
unprogressive ;  external  influences  penetrated  slowly 
into  this  corner  of  the  world,  and  society  was  still 
arranged  as  it  had  been  for  thousands  of  years.  The 
strongest  tie  was  that  of  blood.  A  man's  fellow-tribes- 
men were  bound  to  avenge  his  murder ;  and  so  one 
slaughter  led  to  another,  and  from  generation  to  genera- 
tion the  land  was  filled  with  a  perpetual  series  of  blood- 
feuds.  Twice  a  year,  however,  a  cessation  of  these 
feuds  took  place ;  a  month  came  round  in  which  there 
was  a  universal  truce.  Men  who  were  enemies  then 
made  the  same  pilgrimage  to  a  distant  shrine ;  at  such 
a  time  trade  caravans  could  set  out  and  travel  in  safety  ; 
and  the  great  markets  or  festivals  then  took  place, 
which,  while  based  at  first  on  religious  ideas,  had  in 
most  part  ceased  to  have  any  religious  character.  Some 
of  these  markets  were,  at  the  time  of  Mahomet,  national 
occasions  :  men  of  every  tribe  met  and  came  to  know 
each  other  there  ;  the  poetry  which  had  been  composed 
during  the  preceding  months  was  publicly  recited,  so 
that  the  rise  of  a  new  poet  was  known  to  all  Arabia  ; 
the  news  of  all  the  tribes  circulated,  and  foreign  ideas 
and  doctrines  were  also  to  be  heard.  In  proportion  as 
the  face  of  nature  was  hard  and  forbidding,  social  life 
was  bright  and  gay  ;  wine,  women,  wit,  and  war  pro- 
vided the  themes  of  poets  and  the  ordinary  aims  of  life. 

The  Old  Religrion. — It  has  generally  been  said  that 
the  Arabs  before  Islam  were  irreligious.  They  them- 
selves contrasted  the  sternness  of  the  new  period  with 
the  gaiety  of  the  old  one.  The  truth  is,  as  Wellhausen 
has  admirably  shown,^  that  the  working  religion  of  the 

^  Reste  Arabischen  Heidenthtims,  p.  i88. 


CHAP.  XIII  Islam  219 

country  had  become  before  the  period  of  Islam  entirely 
effete.  Arab  religion  was  based  on  the  ideas  and  usages 
which  have  been  described  in  chap.  x.  of  this  book  ;  it 
is  mainly  from  Arabia,  iiideed,  that  the  original  character 
of  Semitic  religion  is  known  to  us.  Each  tribe  had 
its  god,  whom  it  regarded  as  a  magnified  master  or 
ruler,  and  with  whom  it  held  communion  by  sacrifice, 
the  blood  being  brought  in  contact  with  the  god  and 
the  victim  devoured  by  the  tribesmen.  The  god  is 
represented  sometimes  by  a  tree,  generally  by  a  stone  ; 
a  piece  of  fertile  land  belongs  to  him,  within  which  the 
plants  and  animals  are  sacred  ;  the  religious  meeting 
can  be  held  in  no  other  spot.  Hence  the  Arabs  are 
said  to  be  stone  worshippers ;  but  the  phrase  is  an 
awkward  one :  what  they  worshipped  was  not  the  stone 
but  a  god  connected  with  it.  And  the  early  gods  of 
Arabia  are  a  motley  company ;  it  is  only  in  their 
relations  to  their  worshippers  and  in  the  order  of  the 
worship  paid  them  that  they  have  some  uniformity. 
The  greatest  and  oldest  deity  of  the  Arabs  is  Allat 
or  Alilat,  "the  Lady."  Like  the  female  deity  found 
in  all  primitive  Semitic  religions,  she  is  a  stately  and 
commanding  lady.  She  is  not  the  wife  of  a  god,  nor 
are  unseemly  ideas  connected  with  her.  She  belongs  to 
the  early  world  in  which  motherhood  was  synonymous 
with  rule,  since  the  family  had  no  male  head ;  she  has 
a  character  but  no  history  :  mythology  has  not  gathered 
round  her.  Arabia  has  also  certain  nature-gods.  The 
stellar  deities  are  mostly  female  ;  there  is  a  male  sun-god 
Dusares.  Heaven  is  worshipped  by  some,  not  the  blue  but 
the  rainy  heaven,  which  is  a  source  of  blessings.  There 
are  no  gods  belonging  to  the  region  under  the  earth. 
The  serpent  is  the  only  animal  that  receives  worship. 

But  the  gods  of  Arabia  belong  mostly  to  another 
class  than  that  of  nature-gods  ;  or  at  least  if  they  ever 
were  connected  with  nature,  they  have  parted  with  such 
associations.  They  are  uncouth  figures,  with  vague 
legends  and  miscellaneous  attributes.     One  set  of  them 


2  20  History  of  Religion  part  iii 

is  said  to  have  been  worshipped  by  the  contemporaries 
of  Noah  ;  they  are  big  men,  and  it  is  their  property 
to  drink  milk.  Hubal  was  the  chief  god  of  Mecca. 
It  was  his  property  to  bring  rain.  Vadd  was  a  great 
man,  with  two  garments,  and  a  sword  and  spear,  bow 
and  quiver.  Jaghuth,  "the  Helper,"  was  a  portable 
god,  not  a  stone  probably,  since  he  was  carried  into 
battle  by  his  tribe,  as  the  ark  was  by  the  Israelites. 
Another  god  is  called  "the  Burner,"  no  doubt  from 
the  sacrifices  offered  to  him.  Each  tribe  has  its  god 
or  set  of  gods,  and  certain  sacred  objects  connected 
with  its  gods.  One  god  is  found  by  those  who  kiss 
or  rub  a  certain  black  stone,  another  in  connection  with 
a  white  stone,  another  with  a  tree.  And  of  many  of 
them  there  are  images  ;  the  stone  has  some  work  done 
on  it,  or  there  is  a  wooden  block  roughly  hewn.  The 
"  Caaba "  is  originally  a  black  stone  which  is  kissed  or 
rubbed  at  Mecca.  The  name  was  given,  however,  to 
the  cube-shaped  building,  in  one  of  the  walls  of  which 
the  black  stone  had  been  fixed.  In  this  building  there 
stood  in  old  days  images  of  Abraham  and  Ishmael, 
each  with  divining  arrows  in  his  hand.  Of  such  idols 
a  large  number  existed  in  Mahomet's  time,  and  were 
destroyed  by  him.  In  some  cases  the  image  had  a 
house,  and  a  person  was  needed  to  guard  it ;  this 
functionary  also  kept  some  simple  apparatus  for  casting 
lots  or  otherwise  obtaining  counsel  from  the  deity,  and 
oaths  and  vows  were  made  before  him,  to  which  the 
deity  became  a  witness. 

To  these  beliefs  of  early  Arabia  must  be  added  a 
lively  belief  in  jinns,  spirits  who  are  not  gods,  since 
the  gods  are  above  the  earth,  but  the  jinn  is  compelled 
to  haunt  some  part  of  the  earth's  surface.  The  jinns 
can  assume  any  form  they  choose,  and  are  often  met 
with  in  the  shape  of  serpents.  Wellhausen  surmises 
that  the  seraphs  of  the  Jews  are  to  be  traced  to  some 
such  origin.  They  infest  desert  places,  and  are  nocturnal 
in  their  habits.     What  they  do  is  often  not  observed 


CHAP.  XIII  Islam  22  1 

till  afterwards.  They  spy  upon  the  gods,  and  may 
bring  information  from  above  to  men  whom  they  haunt 
or  with  whom  they  are  in  league.  Of  the  magic  of 
Arabia,  the  signs  and  omens  drawn  from  birds,  from 
dreams,  and  other  occurrences,  it  is  not  necessary  to 
speak  ;  and  we  need  only  say,  in  concluding  this  rough 
sketch  of  the  ideas  of  the  early  Arabs,  that  the  belief 
in  a  life  beyond  was  very  faint ;  they  set  out  food  for 
the  dead,  whom  they  professed  to  think  of  as  still 
existing,  but  the  belief,  if  they  entertained  it,  was 
perfunctory  and  had  no  influence. 

Confusion  of  Worship. — At  the  period  of  Islam  the 
worship  of  Arabia  had  fallen  into  great  confusion.  The 
gods  were  stationary,  but  the  tribes  wandered  ;  and 
the  consequence  was  that  the  wandering  tribe  left  its 
shrine  behind  it  to  be  cared  for  by  its  successors  in 
that  piece  of  country,  and  itself  also,  when  it  gained  a 
new  seat,  succeeded  to  the  guardianship  of  a  new  god. 
Thus,  on  the  one  hand,  the  worship  of  each  shrine  was 
constantly  gathering  new  associations,  as  each  tribe 
which  had  been  there  left  behind  it  some  new  legend 
or  practice ;  and  on  the  other  hand,  pilgrimage  became 
universal,  since  each  tribe  had  to  pay  periodical  visits 
to  its  gods  whom  it  had  left  behind.  At  Mecca  we 
read  of  hundreds  of  idols ;  a  hundred  tribes  have  left 
there  something  of  their  own.  Thus  Mecca  became 
a  sacred  place  for  tribes  far  and  near,  and  rose  into 
national  importance ;  and  the  same  was  the  case  to  a 
less  degree  in  other  places  also.  But  as  this  process 
went  on,  it  inevitably  led  to  the  weakening  of  religion. 
The  tie  of  blood,  which  was  felt  always,  was  a  far 
stronger  thing  than  the  tie  of  a  common  worship  for 
which  the  tribe  had  to  go  to  another  part  of  the 
country,  and  to  come  in  contact  with  a  multitude  of 
other  cults.  Worship  therefore  became  more  and  more 
a  superstition  :  a  thing,  that  is  to  say,  whose  real  sacred- 
ness  was  in  the  past,  and  which  was  only  kept  up 
from  pious   habit ;    it   did    not   supply  the   inspiration 


222  History  of  Religion  part  hi 

of  ordinary  life  nor  guide  the  more  active  minds  among 
the  people. 

We  have  not  yet  spoken  of  Allah,  who  is  understood 
to  be  the  god  par  excellence  of  Arabia.  But  for  this  there 
is  a  good  reason.  Allah  is  not,  like  the  other  beings 
we  have  spoken  of,  a  historical  god,  with  a  legend,  a 
shrine,  a  tribe  all  to  himself.  He  is  not  a  historical 
personage,  but  an  idea  consolidated,  no  doubt  at  an 
early  period,  into  a  god,  Wellhausen  traces  the  rise 
of  Allah  for  us  in  a  most  interesting  way.  The  name, 
he  shows,  is  not  a  proper  name  that  belonged  to  one 
particular  figure  in  the  pantheon  of  Arabia ;  it  is  the 
title  which  the  Arab  conferred  on  his  god,  whatever 
the  proper  name  of  that  being  might  be.  Whatever 
god  he  worshipped,  he  called  him  Allah,  Lord ;  and 
thus  every  Arabic  god  was  Allah,  as  every  head  of  a 
household  has  the  name  of  "  father  "  and  every  monarch 
that  of  "  king."  And  as  every  tribal  god  was  Allah, 
the  thought  arose,  no  doubt  in  very  early  times,  of 
one  god  who  was  common  to  the  tribes.  Language 
paved  the  way  for  thought ;  while  the  tribal  gods  were 
still  believed  in  and  adored,  this  figure  rose  above 
them  —  a  being  who  has  no  special  worship  of  his 
own,  who  does  not  ask  for  it  nor  need  it,  but  who 
yet  fills,  as  none  of  the  lesser  beings  does,  the  char- 
acter of  deity.  Allah  was  the  god  of  all  the  tribes  ; 
and  as  his  figure  grew  in  the  mind  of  the  country,  it 
was  inevitable  that  the  worship  of  the  historical  gods 
should  still  further  lose  its  importance,  till  only  the 
women  and  children  really  cared  for  it.  A  mono- 
theism of  a  grave  and  earnest  kind  thus  made  its 
way  beside  the  old  belief  in  many  gods.  Mahomet 
found  that  his  fellow-countrymen  did  not  really  believe 
in  the  minor  gods ;  when  they  were  in  danger  or  in 
urgent  need  of  any  blessing,  it  was  to  Allah  that  they 
called.  The  fall  of  the  idols,  when  it  came  about,  took 
place  very  easily;  they  were  no  longer  needed.  The 
Arabs  had  come  to   believe   in  a  god   who  dwelt   in 


CHAP.  XIII  Islam  223 

heaven  and  was  the  creator  of  the  world,  who  ordained 
man's  hfe  with  an  irreversible  decree,  by  whom  the 
bitter  and  the  sweet,  both  the  hitting  of  the  mark 
and  the  missing  it,  were  alike  fixed.  The  moral  char- 
acter of  Allah  was  not  markedly  in  advance  of  that 
of  his  people.  What  a  man  gains  by  robbery  he  calls 
the  gift  of  Allah,  while  what  is  gained  by  industry  is 
called  by  another  name.  Yet  Allah  is  also  felt  by 
some  to  keep  them  back  from  robbery  ;  he  powerfully 
upholds  the  moral  standards  which  have  been  reached. 
He  is  the  defender  of  strangers,  the  avenger  of  treason. 
His  moral  influence  is  negative,  however,  rather  than 
positive.  He  does  not  inspire  with  ideals  of  good- 
ness ;  but  he  holds  back  from  evil.  He  is  not  a  being 
who  is  ever  likely  to  enter,  like  the  God  of  the  Jews, 
into  intimate  and  affectionate  relations  with  men ;  he 
is  too  abstract  and  has  too  little  history  to  be  capable 
of  such  unbending ;  his  religion,  when  it  comes  to  be 
fully  formed,  will  be  one  of  puritans  and  fanatics  rather 
than  of  the  meek  and  lowly.  He  is  the  one  great 
instance  of  a  god  without  any  natural  basis  who  has 
come  to  exercise  rule.  He  is  a  god  of  whom  reason 
can  thoroughly  approve  —  no  absurd  legends  cling  to 
him ;  he  is  from  the  first  great,  mighty,  and  moral  ; 
and  he  rules  the  world  in  righteousness  by  inflexible 
standards.  This  religion  is  coming  to  the  surface  even 
in  the  "time  of  ignorance." 

Judaism  and  Christianity  in  Arabia. — The  question 
has  been  much  discussed  whether  the  new  religion  of 
Arabia  was  due  to  contact  with  Judaism  or  with  Christi- 
anity. Both  of  these  faiths  were  known  in  Arabia 
before  the  time  of  the  Prophet.  There  was  a  large 
Jewish  population  at  Medina,  and  synagogues  existed 
in  many  other  places ;  and  there  were  Christians  in 
Arabia,  though  their  Christianity  was  that  only  of 
small  sects  and  of  lonely  ascetics,  and  had  failed  to 
convert  the  country  as  a  whole.  To  the  Arabs  the 
Jews  were  "the  people  of  the  Book,"  the  book  in  the 


224  History  of  Religion  part  hi 

traditions  of  which  they  also  had  some  share.  Ignorant 
themselves  for  the  most  part  of  the  arts  of  reading 
and  writing,  and  divided  among  a  multitude  of  petty 
worships  which  they  were  ceasing  to  respect,  they 
looked  up  with  envy  to  those  whose  faith  had  been  fixed 
for  so  many  ages  in  a  literary  standard.  But  while 
the  Jews  were  respected  in  Arabia,  they  were  far  from 
popular.  The  qualities  which  have  drawn  down  on 
them  the  bitter  hatred  of  modern  peoples  among  whom 
they  dwell,  acted  there  in  the  same  way ;  their  pride 
and  exclusiveness,  their  keenness  in  business,  their 
profession  as  money  -  lenders,  made  them  detested  in 
Arabia  as  in  modern  Germany.  On  the  other  hand,  the 
ascetic  view  of  life  which  the  Christians  represented 
had  attractions  even  for  some  of  the  higher  minds 
among  the  Arabs.  A  set  of  men  called  "  Hanyfs  "  were 
well  known  in  Mahomet's  time,  who  were  seeking  for 
a  better  religion  than  the  Arab  worships  afforded,  and 
a  better  life  than  that  of  eternal  feud.  The  meaning 
of  the  name  is  controverted  ;  those  to  whom  it  was 
applied  had  not  attached  themselves  to  Judaism  nor 
to  Christianity ;  they  were  people  in  earnest  about 
religion  who  had  not  reached  any  definite  position. 
Even  where,  as  with  Mahomet  himself,  the  facts  of 
Judaism  and  of  Christianity  were  most  inaccurately 
known,  the  view  of  God  held  in  these  religions  and  the 
moral  standard  they  set  up  could  not  fail  to  exercise 
much  influence.  If  in  Arab  thought  itself  a  god  like 
Allah  was  rising  to  definite  personal  character  and  to 
a  position  of  great  superiority  over  the  old  gods,  then 
the  inner  movement  was  in  the  same  direction  as  the 
influence  of  older  religions  from  without,  and  the  time 
was  ripe  for  a  new  faith.  It  was  not  to  be  expected 
that  a  people  like  the  Arabs  should  accept  a  religion 
which  had  its  origin  in  another  country,  or  which 
threatened  like  Christianity  to  bring  to  an  end  the  old 
tribal  system  ;  a  new  growth  from  within  was  needed, 
and  this  was  ready  to  appear. 


CHAP.  XIII  Islam 


225 


The    beginning's    of    most    religions    are    wrapt    in 
obscurity;    but  the  rise  of  Islam  is  known  to  us  with 
perfect    certainty   and   in    considerable   detail.        The 
only  difficulties  in  the  way  of  understanding  it  are  of 
a   psychological  nature ;    we   have  to  account  for  the 
foundation  of  a  religion  which  spread  with  lightning 
speed   over   many  lands,  and  which  still  continues  to 
spread,  by  one  whose  character  was   in  some  respects 
far  from  noble,  and  who  was  capable  of  stooping  to 
compromise    and    to    the    darkest    treachery   in    order 
to   gain    his    ends.      How   a   religion    fitted    for    many 
races  and  many  generations  of  men  could  be  founded 
by  a  barbarian  and  by  the  aid   of  barbarous  means — 
that  is   the    problem    of  this    religion.     The    materials 
for  solving  it  lie  open  before  us.     The  Koran  is  un- 
doubtedly  the   authentic   work    of   Mahomet    himself: 
the  suras  or  chapters  are  arranged  in  a  wrong  order, 
and  if  they  are  read  as  they  stand   do   not   tell    any 
intelligible  story ;    but  when  placed,  as  has  now  been 
done   by  scholars,^   in   the   true   historical   order,  they 
show  the  history  of  Mahomet's  mind  with  great  clear- 
ness.    After   the   Koran   came   the   traditions.      From 
the   immense   volume    of    these   the    industry   of    the 
scholars  of  Islam  as  well  as  others  has  succeeded   in 
sifting  out  what  is  most  to  be  relied  on.     In  no  other 
case  is  the  separation  of  the  mythical  from  the  histori- 
cal element  in  the  early  traditions  so  easily  made,  and 
the  religion  comes  into  view  in  the  full  light  of  day. 

Mahomet.  Early  Life. — Mahomet  was  born  about 
570  A.D.,  of  a  family  belonging  to  the  Mecca  branch 
of  the  Coreish,  a  powerful  tribe,  who  carried  on  a 
large  caravan  trade  with  Syria,  and  who  were  the 
guardians  of  the  sanctuary  which  was  the  central 
point  of  Arabian  religion.  He  entered  therefore  from 
his  birth  into  the  centre  of  the  faith  of  his   country. 

^  S.  Lane  -  Poole,  The  Speeches  of  Mohammad,  1882 ;  the  most 
important  parts  of  the  Koran  chronologically  arranged  with  a  very  useM 
introduction. 


2  26  History  of  Religion  part  in 

He  was  early  left  an  orphan,  and  was  brought  up  by 
relatives,  who  were  kind  to  him  but  who  were  very 
poor.  He  had  to  make  his  living  at  an  early  age  by 
herding  sheep,  an  occupation  which  conduced  in  his 
case,  as  it  has  done  in  others,  to  contemplation  and 
thought.  In  early  manhood  he  entered  the  service  of 
Khadija,  a  rich  widow ;  and  he  made  journeys  in  her 
affairs  to  Syria  and  Palestine,  where  he  may  have 
seen  places  famous  in  Jewish  history  and  may  also 
have  come  in  contact  with  Christianity.  At  the  age 
of  twenty-five  he  married  Khadija,  who  was  fifteen 
years  older  than  himself;  the  marriage  was  a  happy 
one,  and  there  were  several  children.  He  is  described 
as  a  man  of  middle  height,  with  a  fair  skin,  a  pleasant 
countenance,  and  pleasing  manners  ;  and  he  had  proved 
his  ability  in  business.  Some  years  after  his  marriage 
he  began  to  think  deeply  about  religious  subjects.  He 
came  into  connection  apparently  with  some  of  those 
Hanyfs  or  penitents,  mentioned  above,  who,  without 
being  formed  into  a  sect,  were  at  one  in  seeking  for 
a  more  satisfactory  religious  position.  The  religion  to 
which  they  were  feeling  their  way  was  a  monotheism, 
a  service  of  the  one  God  of  Abraham,  but  not  that 
of  Judaism  with  its  exaltation  of  the  Jewish  race,  nor 
that  of  Christianity,  in  which  God  had  a  Son  for  his 
companion.  Submission  to  the  one  God  was  to  them 
the  essence  of  religion.  "Islam"  means  submission, 
and  the  "  Moslem "  is  the  person  who  thus  submits 
himself  to  the  one  sole  God,  whether  he  be  Jew  or 
Christian  or  neither.  The  Hanyfs  also  held  the  belief 
of  the  Christians  in  a  coming  judgment;  and  the 
effect  of  their  beliefs  on  their  lives  was  that  they 
practised  austerities  and  often  retired  from  the  world. 
His  Religious  Impressions. — Mahomet  at  this  part 
of  his  life  began  also  to  withdraw  himself,  and  to  go 
apart  to  lonely  spots  for  meditation.  What  he  medi- 
tated we  see  from  his  sayings  and  doings  afterwards. 
The   contrast   between   the  pure  religion  of  Allah,  as 


CHAP.   XIII 


Islam  227 


held  by  the  Hanyfs,  and  the  popular  religion  of  Mecca 
with  which  his  birth  connected  him,  with  its  trade 
associations,  its  idols,  its  unintelligible  rites,  was 
certainly  a  tremendous  one  ;  and  if  a  judgment  was 
impending  over  all  but  the  believers  in  Allah,  it  was  a 
terrible  prospect.  For  many  years,  however,  Mahomet 
was  simply  a  Hanyf  He  was  one  who  had  sur- 
rendered himself,  with  a  tender  and  impressionable 
soul,  to  the  divine  will  and  guidance,  and  was  filled 
with  the  sense  of  Allah's  presence  and  power,  and  of 
his  own  accountability  to  him  in  the  great  and 
tremendous  realities  of  life.  In  addition  to  this,  how- 
ever, we  have  to  mention  a  circumstance  which  is 
generally  thought  to  have  had  a  determining  influence 
in  Mahomet's  production  of  Islam.  He  had  a  peculiar 
temperament;  mental  excitement  led* in  him  to  inner 
catastrophes  which,  whether  they  are  classed  under 
epilepsy  or  hysteria,  caused  him  to  see  visions  and 
to  believe  that  certain  words  had  been  addressed  to 
him  by  heavenly  visitants.  The  new  religious  move- 
ment in  Arabia  had  secured  an  adherent  in  whom  its 
teachings  would  be  felt  with  tremendous  intensity,  and 
would  possibly  break  forth  with  irresistible  force. 

The  Revelations. — Mahomet  was  forty  years  of  age 
when  the  thoughts  which  had  long  been  working 
within  him  burst  into  open  expression.  This  took 
place  by  means  of  a  vision.  An  angel  appeared  to 
him  as  he  slept  on  Mount  Hira  on  one  of  his  nightly 
wanderings,  and  held  a  scroll  before  him  which  he 
bade  him  read.  He  had  not  learned  to  read,  but  the 
angel  insisted,  and  so  he  read  ;  and  what  he  read  was 
the  earliest  revealed  piece  of  the  Koran  (sura  96)  : — 

Read,^  in  the  name  of  thy  Lord  who  created,  created  man  from 
a  drop.  Read,  for  thy  Lord  is  the  Most  High,  who  hath  taught  by 
the  pen,  hath  taught  to  man  what  he  knew  not.  Nay,  truly  man 
walketh  in  delusion  when  he  deemeth  that  he  sufficeth  for  himself; 
to  thy  Lord  they  must  all  return. 

'  Or,  Preach  ! — loud  reading  or  repetition  being  the  mode  of  claiming 
attention  for  the  divine  word. 


2  28  ^         History  of  Religion  part  hi 

All  men,  i.e.,  however  they  may  think,  as  the  Arabs 
were  given  to  think,  that  they  need  no  help  but  that 
of  their  own  right  arm,  must  come  before  Allah's 
judgment  and  render  an  account  to  him  :  this  is  the 
doctrine  by  which  Mahomet  first  appealed  to  his  fellow- 
countrymen.  It  is  a  revelation.  Allah  teaches  it  by 
sending  down  a  copy  of  what  is  written  in  the  Book 
in  heaven,  the  "  mother  of  the  Book "  from  which  all 
revelations,  Jewish,  Christian,  or  Mahomet's  own,  are 
alike  derived.  Mahomet  has  thus  begun  to  prophesy. 
The  first  outburst  of  revelation  threw  him  into  great 
agitation ;  he  thought  he  was  possessed  by  a  jinn ; 
and  it  tended  to  his  further  distress  that  an  interval 
of  two  or  three  years  elapsed  before  another  vision 
took  place.  Then  the  vision  came  again.  "  Rise  up 
and  warn ! "  it  ^aid  to  him  ;  "  and  thy  Lord  magnify, 
and  thy  garments  purify,  and  abomination  shun,  and 
grant  not  favours  to  gain  increase;  and  wait  for  thy 
Lord."  The  revelations  now  began  to  come  in  rapid 
succession,  and  Mahomet  now  believed  in  his  own 
inspiration.  In  this  conviction  he  never  wavered  after- 
wards ;  and  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  earlier 
revelations  were  felt  by  him  as  if  they  came  from 
without  and  were  dictated  by  a  power  he  could  not 
resist.  His  fellow-countrymen  naturally  took  another 
view ;  like  other  prophets,  Mahomet  was  said  to  be 
mad  and  to  be  possessed  by  a  spirit ;  and  these 
accusations  stung  him,  because  he  himself  had  at  first 
apprehended  something  of  the  kind.  The  later  pieces 
were  of  a  different  character ;  he  had  the  power  after- 
wards of  producing  a  revelation  to  suit  any  situation 
which  arose ;  but  the  contents  of  the  earlier  ones  were 
not  unworthy  of  being  revelations,  and  such  he  felt 
them  to  be. 

His  Preaching". — He  preached  the  new  truth  at  first  to 
those  with  whom  he  was  intimate.  It  was  not  new  but 
old  ;  it  was  the  religion  of  Abraham  that  he  preached, 
that  of  the  Book  of  which  both  Jews  and  Christians 


CHAP.   XIII 


Islam  229 


had  counterparts  ;  he  did  not  thi'nk  of  founding  a  new 
religion.  He  called  his  own  household  and  his  relatives 
to  submit  themselves  to  Allah,  the  supreme  Lord  and 
the  righteous  Judge,  before  whose  judgment  they  must 
soon  stand.  They  were  to  put  away  heathen  vices  and 
to  practise  the  duty  of  regular  prayer,  of  giving  alms 
^  without  hoping  for  any  advantage  from  it,  and  of 
temperance.  After  a  time  he  is  encouraged  by  new 
suras  to  preach  publicly,  and  does  so.  The  Meccans, 
however,  do  not  listen  to  him.  The  prophet's  preaching 
acquires  by  this  opposition  a  sternness  it  did  not  possess 
at  first,  and  he  proceeds  tq  attack  the  popular  worship 
in  a  way  fitted  to  stir  up  against  him  the  bitterest 
hostility.  The  Meccans  hear  from  him  that  the  religion 
to  which  all  Arabia  flocks  together,  and  without  which 
they  would  do  little  trade,  is  not  only  a  vanity  but  a 
thing  abhorrent  to  Allah,  and  undoubtedly  drawing 
down  damnation  on  all  who  partake  in  it ;  and  that 
their  forefathers  are  unquestionably  in  hell.  Such 
preaching  could  not  be  tolerated  ;  Mahomet's  friends 
are  appealed  to  to  stop  his  mouth,  but  in  vain,  and 
his  fellow-tribesmen,  though  they  do  not  believe  in 
him,  yet  protect  him,  as  the  laws  of  kindred  require. 
Persecution. — Mahomet  suffers  as  other  prophets 
have  done;  he  is  ridiculed,  misjudged,  threatened.  On 
the  other  hand  he  has  his  consolations  ;  when  depressed 
he  receives  encouraging  messages  from  above.  His 
enemies  will  perish ;  his  cause  will  succeed  ;  the  day 
will  come  when  men  will  flock  to  his  doctrine  in  crowds. 
Persecution,  however,  is  not  without  effect  on  him  :  on 
one  occasion  he  attempted  to  compromise  matters  with 
idolatry  ;  in  a  sura  recited  at  the  Caaba  he  allowed 
himself  to  use  certain  complimentary  expressions  about 
the  three  daughters  of  Allah,  in  whom  the  Meccans  put 
their  trust.  The  Meccans  were  much  pleased  with  this, 
but  Mahomet  had  to  suffer  the  reproaches  of  the 
angel  Gabriel  after  he  went  home,  and  the  concession 
was   erelong   withdrawn.       If,   as    appears    likely,    the 


230  History  of  Religion  part  hi 

compromise  had  been  deliberately  planned,  a  strange  light 
is  thrown  on  the  nature  of  the  revelations  at  a  time 
not  long  after  they  had  begun  to  flow.  But  there  is 
no  approach  to  compromise  after  this.  The  position  of 
the  prophet  naturally  grew  worse  after  this  display  of 
weakness,  and  the  persecution  of  the  townsmen  more 
embittered ;  for  two  years  Mahomet  and  his  followers  ' 
were  rigorously  cut  off  from  intercourse  with  their 
fellow-citizens.  On  the  other  hand  the  prophet's  tone 
became  harder  and  more  sombre  as  he  saw  that  no 
turning  back  was  possible.  Never  were  the  terrors  of 
hell  preached  with  more  intensity ;  it  makes  one's  blood 
run  cold  to  read  the  denunciations  of  the  Mecca  un- 
believers, men  personally  known  to  the  prophet,  and 
to  hear  him  forecast  the  words  with  which  they  will 
be  bidden  to  take  their  place  for  ever  in  the  fire. 
Personal  irritation  gives  edge  to  the  denunciations  of 
fanaticism.  Examples  are  sought  in  Jewish  history  of 
those  who  rejected  prophets,  Moses  or  Noah,  and 
suffered  a  prompt  and  terrible  judgment  for  so  doing. 
The  Meccans  were  little  moved  by  such  threats  ;  they 
had  no  real  belief  in  a  future  life,  and  scoffed  at  the 
idea  of  a  resurrection  of  the  body  ;  and  for  this  scepticism 
also  parallels  are  found  by  the  prophet  in  history,  which 
show  what  fate  the  doubters  may  expect. 

From  reading  the  Koran  we  should  judge  Mahomet 
to  have  been  a  disagreeable  fanatic ;  but  he  also 
possessed  very  different  qualities.  Those  who  knew 
him  best  were  most  devoted  to  him.  His  followers 
adhered  to  him  with  a  faith  which  was  proof  against 
all  persecutions ;  we  find  him  even  ordaining  that 
slaves  who  are  converts  may  dissemble  their  connec- 
tion with  him  in  order  to  avoid  the  cruel  treatment  it 
drew  down  on  them.  Such  attachment  could  only 
have  been  inspired  by  a  noble  nature ;  his  followers 
felt  him  to  be  indeed  a  teacher  sent  by  Allah,  and 
were  enthusiastically  convinced  of  the  truth  of  his 
doctrine. 


CHAP,  xiii  Islam  231 

Trials.  He  decides  to  leave  Mecca. — In  spite  of  this 
his  position  was  a  precarious  and  trying  one.  His  wife 
Khadija,  to  whom  he  had  been  most  faithful,  died;  so 
did  his  most  powerful  protector.  The  cause,  moreover, 
was  not  advancing  at  Mecca,  and  was  not  likely  to  do 
so ;  and  Mahomet  began  to  consider  the  propriety  of 
transferring  it  to  new  ground.  The  first  attempt  to 
do  so  was  not  successful;  at  Taif,  where  he  asked  to 
be  received  and  to  be  allowed  to  preach,  he  was  rudely 
repulsed,  so  that  he  came  back  to  Mecca  in  deep  dejec- 
tion. The  new  opening  which  he  sought  was,  however, 
about  to  present  itself  in  another  quarter.  Among  the 
visitors  to  one  of  the  feasts  he  met  a  company  of 
pilgrims  from  Medina,  who  both  addressed  him  with 
respect  and  showed  that  they  understood  his  doctrines. 
Medina  was  well  acquainted  with  Jewish  ideas,  and 
presented  a  more  favourable  soil  for  the  prophet  to 
work  on  ;  it  is  even  suggested  that  the  Arabs  of  Medina, 
having  heard  of  the  Jewish  expectation  of  a  Messiah, 
considered  that  it  would  be  an  advantage  for  them  if 
the  Messiah  should  be  of  their  own  race,  and  that 
Mahomet  might  possibly  be  He.  The  transference  of 
the  cause  to  Medina  was,  however,  brought  about  with 
great  deliberation.  Those  who  wished  Mahomet  to 
come  preached  his  doctrine  at  Medina  for  a  year,  and 
with  encouraging  success.  Pledges  were  given  and 
repeated  by  his  friends  there,  that  they  would  have  no 
god  but  Allah,  that  they  would  withhold  their  hands 
from  what  was  not  their  own,  that  they  would  flee 
fornication,  that  they  would  not  kill  new-born  infants, 
that  they  would  shun  slander,  and  that  they  would 
obey  God's  messenger  as  far  as  was  reasonable : — these 
are  the  practical  reforms  which  Islam  at  this  time 
demanded.  The  result  of  these  proceedings  was  that 
Mahomet  advised  his  followers  to  go  to  Medina,  He 
himself  waited  till  nearly  all  had  gone,  and  did  not 
set  out  till  a  plot  had  been  laid  by  his  enemies  the 
Coreish  to  assassinate  him.     The  Hegira  or  flight  took 


2 3^  History  of  Religion  part  in 

place  on  i6th  June  622  a.d.  The  flight,  not  the  birth 
of  the  prophet,  forms  the  era  of  Mohammedan  chron- 
ology, since  it  was  from  the  moment  of  the  flight  that 
Islam  entered  on  its  victorious  career, 

Mahomet  at  Medina— From  this  point  onwards  the 
prophet  is  seen  in  a  different  position  and  a  different 
character.  At  Mecca  he  is  a  persecuted,  struggling, 
and  unsuccessful  preacher,  but  at  Medina  he  rapidly 
becomes  the  most  powerful  person  in  the  common- 
wealth. He  organises  the  service  of  religion,  but  he 
also  gives  new  life  to  the  community  in  other  ways, 
terminating  its  feuds,  uniting  all  its  forces  in  the  service 
of  Allah,  and  by  his  decisions  in  the  cases  which  are 
brought  to  him  laying  the  foundation  of  a  new  juris- 
prudence. A  pure  theocracy  was  set  up  at  Medina, 
and  he  as  the  prophet  was  its  sole  organ  and  adminis- 
trator. In  this  capacity  he  displayed  consummate 
ability.  Alike  in  religious  and  in  civil  matters  he 
showed  the  most  perfect  comprehension  of  his  country- 
men. He  resorted  freely  to  compromise  in  order  to 
make  his  religion  and  policy  suitable  to  the  masses 
of  his  people  and  to  secure  their  adhesion.  In  this 
way  he  soon  secured  for  himself  an  absolute  authority. 

The  new  religion  thus  became  the  cement  by  which 
a  strong  commonwealth  was  formed  out  of  elements 
formerly  at  variance.  Mahomet's  first  care  on  reaching 
Medina  was  to  organise  the  service  of  the  faith.  A 
place  was  built  where  the  congregation  could  meet  for 
prayer  and  exhortation  ;  the  prophet's  house  beside  it, 
or  rather  the  apartments  of  his  wives,  for  he  now  had 
two,  and  was  soon  to  have  more.  The  mosque,  which  all 
over  the  world  is  the  local  habitation  of  Islam,  may  have 
been  derived  from  the  synagogue  or  the  Christian  church. 
The  service  which  takes  place  in  it  is  not  a  sacrifice,  but 
consists  of  intellectual  exercises  which  nourish  in  the 
hearers  the  spirit  of  the  religion.  In  the  Mosque  of 
Medina  Mahomet  taught  his  converts  the  practices  and 
duties  which  were  required  of  them.     He  taught  this 


CHAP.  XIII  Islam  233 

with  great  precision,  and  himself  set  an  example  how 
each  exercise  was  to  be  done ;  so  that,  as  Wellhausen 
says,  the  mosque  became  the  exercise  ground  where 
the  people  were  drilled  in  the  requirements  of  the 
new  faith.  "  There  the  Moslems  acquired  the  esprit  de 
corps  and  the  rigid  discipline  which  distinguish  their 
armies." 

New  Religrious  Union. — A  new  bond  of  union  thus  took 
the  place  of  the  old  tie  of  blood,  which  had  been  by  far 
the  strongest  in  Arabia.  Every  Moslem  regarded  every 
other  Moslem  as  his  brother,  even  though  belonging  to  a 
different  tribe.  The  claims  of  religion  came  to  supersede 
all  others  ;  all  natural  tastes,  all  family  affections,  were 
taught  to  yield  to  them.  Within  a  few  years  of  his 
coming  to  Medina  Mahomet  had  forbidden  the  use  of 
wine  and  the  pursuit  of  art,  and  had  imposed  on  all 
women  who  adhered  to  him  the  use  of  the  veil.  In  every 
way  the  community  was  taught  to  regard  itself  as 
separated  from  the  former  life  of  the  country  and  from 
all  who  did  not  share  the  new  faith.  It  was  represented 
as  the  duty  of  believers  to  fight  against  all  unbelievers : 
in  this  way  the  universal  prevalence  of  the  religion  was 
to  be  brought  about.  The  courage  of  the  faithful  was 
stimulated  by  the  promise  of  rich  booty  and  by  the 
assurance  that  those  who  fell  in  battle  would  go  straight 
to  the  joys  of  Paradise ;  and  the  wars  they  waged 
acquired  in  consequence  a  relentless  character  which 
was  new  in  Arabia.  They  were  allowed  to  fight  in  the 
sacred  month,  in  which  ancient  custom  ordained  a  uni- 
versal truce.  They  fought  with  a  gloomy  determination, 
and  used  their  victories  with  a  relentless  cruelty,  which 
excited  the  consternation  and  horror  of  all  witnesses. 
They  did  not  scruple,  as  other  Arabs  did,  to  fight 
against  their  kinsmen.  "  Islam  has  rent  all  bonds 
asunder,  Islam  has  blotted"  out  all  treaties,"  they  said, 
when  reproached  with  their  disregard  of  old  understand- 
ings. The  prophet  himself  was  foremost  in  this  unrelent- 
ing policy.     Captives  taken  in  battle  were  slaughtered  ; 


2  34  History  of  Religion  part  hi 

a  whole  tribe  was  massacred  which  had  joined  the 
enemy,  and  had  surrendered  after  a  siege  in  the  hope 
of  merciful  treatment. 

Breach  with  Judaism  and  Christianity.  —  As 
Mahomet  thus  freed  himself,  in  spreading  the  faith  of 
"the  most  merciful  God,"  from  all  considerations  of 
mercy  and  of  honour,  he  also  shook  off,  as  his  position 
grew  strong,  relations  which  might  have  proved  embar- 
rassing with  other  religions.  In  his  earlier  teaching  he 
speaks  of  his  own  religion  as  being  substantially  the 
same  as  Judaism  and  Christianity.  All  three  have  "  the 
Book  "  ;  the  Koran  is  a  continuation  and  supplement  of 
the  Jewish  and  Christian  revelations,  and  he  is  only  the 
last  figure  in  the  great  line  of  prophets  who  had  appeared 
in  these  religions.  Like  other  founders,  he  did  not  at 
first  intend  to  found  a  new  religion,  but  only  to  bring  to 
light  again  and  restore  to  authority  the  original  truths  of 
these  faiths,  which  had  become  obscured.  His  attitude  at 
first,  therefore,  was  friendly  to  both  Jews  and  Christians, 
and  his  friendly  feelings  for  the  former  were  likely  to 
be  strengthened  by  the  circumstances  of  his  coming  to 
Medina.  Not  long  after  his  arrival,  however,  his  atti- 
tude towards  the  Jews  was  changed.  His  followers  had 
at  first  prayed  with  their  faces  turned  in  the  direction  of 
Jerusalem  ;  but  the  prophet  ordained  that  this  should  be 
altered,  and  that  they  should  pray  with  their  faces  turned 
not  towards  Jerusalem  but  towards  Mecca.  This  setting 
of  a  new  "  kiblah,"  as  it  is  called,  declared  that  Islam  was 
a  different  religion  from  Judaism,  and  had  an  Arab  not 
a  Jewish  centre.  The  hostility  to  the  Jews,  of  which  this 
was  a  symptom,  grew  more  intense ;  quarrels  were 
sought  with  them  which  ended  in  the  utter  annihilation 
of  the  Jewish  power  at  Medina.  From  Christianity  also 
Mahomet  was  careful  to  distinguish  his  religion.  The 
Christians  of  Arabia  were  less  tenacious  of  their  faith 
than  were  the  Jews,  and  easily  accepted  Islam,  so  that 
the  hostility  was  not  in  this  case  so  intense.  The 
doctrines  of  the  Trinity  and  of  the  Incarnation  were  of 


CHAP.  XIII  Islam 


235 


course  denounced  as  intolerable  blasphemies  against  the 
sole  deity  of  Allah. 

Domestic. — Thehistory  of  Mahomet  during  the  Medina 
period  is  taken  up  to  some  extent  with  the  various 
marriages  into  which  he  entered,  and  with  the  scandals 
of  his  household.  On  several  occasions  he  produced 
revelations  to  warrant  a  step  in  this  connection  which  he 
felt  to  require  justification,  and  the  modern  reader  is 
forced  to  wonder  how  his  credit  survived  some  of  those 
proceedings.  While  it  is  undoubtedly  the  case  that  he 
did  much  to  improve  the  position  of  women  in  Arabia, 
the  absence  of  any  high  ideal  in  this  matter  is  very 
apparent. 

Conquest  of  Mecca. — In  giving  his  followers  a  new 
kiblah  and  bidding  them  turn  their  faces  towards  Mecca 
at  their  prayers,  Mahomet  declared  that  city  to  be  the 
religious  capital  of  Arabia.  Though  he  had  left  Mecca 
in  anger,  he  could  not  forget  or  ignore  the  city  which 
held  this  place  in  his  eyes.  At  first  his  thoughts  of 
Mecca  were  those  of  vengeance;  he  had  a  score  to 
settle  with  the  Coreish,  who  had  scorned  and  persecuted 
him,  and  had  driven  him  forth.  For  several  years  there 
was  war  between  Medina  and  the  Coreish  ;  the  Moslems 
plundered  the  rich  caravans  of  Mecca  ;  in  the  great  battle 
of  Bedr  (a.d.  623)  Mahomet  defeated  his  enemies  and 
com.pelled  them  to  respect  and  fear  him  ;  and  they  after- 
wards attacked  and  besieged  him  at  Medina,  with  no 
decisive  result.  The  next  step  was  that  Mahomet  made 
use  of  the  sacred  month  to  attempt  a  pilgrimage  to 
Mecca,  from  which  he  had  been  absent  for  six  years 
(628) ;  and  though  he  was  prevented  from  performing 
his  devotions  at  the  Caaba  on  this  occasion,  the  Coreish 
found  it  good  to  make  a  treaty  with  him,  thus  recog- 
nising him  as  a  potentate,  and  to  promise  that  he 
should  be  allowed  to  make  the  pilgrimage  on  a  future 
occasion.  That  pilgrimage  took  place  ;  and  so  quickly 
was  Mahomet's  power  increasing  in  the  rest  of  Arabia 
that  the  Meccans  began  to  feel  that  they  could  not  long 


236  History  of  Religion  part  hi 

resist  him.  In  the  year  630  he  moved  against  Mecca 
with  a  large  army,  and  met  with  but  faint  opposition. 
Mecca  fell  into  his  hands.  He  used  his  victory  nobly  : 
only  four  persons  were  put  to  death.  It  was  at  once 
shown  that  no  injury  was  to  be  done  to  the  city.  The 
old  worship  and  its  various  ceremonies  were  preserved. 
All  idols,  of  course,  were  destroyed,  both  those  about 
the  Caaba,  of  which  there  are  said  to  have  been  one 
for  each  day  in  the  year,  and  those  in  private  houses. 

Mecca  made  the  Capital  of  Islam. — In  fact  Mecca 
gained  new  importance  from  this  conquest.  It  was 
constituted  by  the  irresistible  power  of  Mahomet  the 
central  sanctuary  of  the  true  religion.  A  year  after  the 
victory  Mahomet  again  visited  Mecca,  and  performed 
the  pilgrimage  with  all  its  rites  in  his  own  person, 
setting  the  correct  pattern  in  every  detail,  which  all 
pilgrims  were  to  observe  in  all  time  coming.  Those 
who  wish  to  know  what  the  rites  of  Mecca  are,  will 
find  them  graphically  and  minutely  described  in  Captain 
Burton's  Pilgrimage  to  El-Medinah  and  Mecca;  that 
gallant  oftker  was  one  of  the  three  Europeans  who, 
during  the  nineteenth  century,  assumed  the  disguise  of 
pilgrims  and  took  part  in  the  observances.  The  kissing 
of  the  sacred  black  stone  in  the  wall  of  the  Caaba,  the 
sevenfold  circuit  of  the  building,  the  drinking  of  the 
water  of  the  well  Zem-zem,  the  race  from  one  hill-top  to 
another  in  the  neighbourhood  of  Mecca,  the  throwing  of 
seven  stones  at  a  certain  spot,  and  the  sacrifice  of  an 
animal  in  a  certain  valley — these  form  a  collection  of 
rites  each  of  which  had  probably  a  separate  origin,  and 
of  some  of  which  the  original  meaning  can  scarcely  be 
made  out.^  This  "  block  of  heathenism  "  Mahomet  made 
part  of  his  religion.  He  could  not  have  abolished  it, 
and  by  adopting  it  in  an  improved  form  as  a  part  of  his 
own  system  he  served  himself  heir  to  the  national 
religious  traditions,  and  acquired  for  his  own  religion 
the  authority  of  a  national  faith.     "This  day  have   I 

'  See  for  this  Wellhausen's  Reste  arabiscken  Heideiithums,  pp.  64-98. 


CHAP,  XIII  Islam  237 

appointed  your  religion  unto  you,"  are  his  words  after 
fixing  the  forms  of  the  pilgrimage,  "and  applied  Islam 
for  you  to  be  your  religion."  Islam  adopts  the  Mecca 
rites,  and  thereby  becomes  the  national  religion  of 
Arabia.  Hubal,  the  chief  god  of  the  Caaba,  disappears  ; 
Allah  becomes  the  sole  god  of  the  shrine.  The  legend 
that  Abraham  founded  it  is  put  in  circulation,  and  it 
is  thus  connected  with  the  supposed  earliest  Arabian 
religion,  the  religion  before  idolatry,  the  Islam  before 
Islam.  As  Paul  appeals  to  the  faith  of  Abraham  as 
being  a  Christianity  before  Christ,  so  Mahomet  claims 
the  Caaba  for  the  pure  worship  of  Allah  in  primeval 
times.  It  is  sacred  henceforth  to  him  alone.  The  rule 
was  set  up  that  no  idolater  should  be  admitted  to  the 
pilgrimage,  and  it  thus  lost  its  character  as  a  heathen, 
and  became  instead  a  Moslem,  institution. 

Spread  of  Islam. — Mecca  once  converted,  the  rest  of 
Arabia  could  not  long  remain  outside.  There  was 
reluctance  in  various  places  to  make  the  change  which 
Mahomet  now  required  of  all  his  countrymen.  But  the 
penalty  of  refusing  it  was  the  prophet's  wrath,  with 
its  terrible  attendants,  war  and  rapine,  and  none  of 
the  Arabs  cared  enough  for  their  old  gods  to  brave 
such  terrors  for  their  sake.  The  inhabitants  of  Taif 
endeavoured  to  make  terms,  so  that  the  change  might 
be  less  abrupt.  Their  ambassadors  urged  that  fornica- 
tion, usury,  and  the  use  of  wine  might  be  allowed  them, 
but  this  could  not  be  granted  ;  the  Taifites  must  accept 
the  deprivations  to  which  all  the  Moslems  had  agreed. 
Then  they  asked  that  their  Rabba,  their  goddess,  might 
be  spared  to  them  for  three  years,  and  as  this  was  refused, 
for  two  years,  a  year,  a  month.  But  the  only  concession 
they  could  obtain  was  that  they  should  not  be  obliged  to 
destroy  their  goddess  with  their  own  hands.  The  ancient 
paganism,  it  will  be  seen,  fell  easily  and  without  any 
tragedy. 

Mahomet  did  not  long  survive  the  national  acceptance 
of  his  religion  ;  he  died  on  8th  June  632.     But  he  did 


238  History  of  Religion  part  hi 

not  die  without  liaving  opened  up  to  his  followers  very- 
wide  views  for  the  future  of  his  cause,  and  started  them 
on  a  career  of  religious  war  and  conquest  which  was  not 
soon  to  be  arrested.  From  a  comparatively  early  period 
of  his  career  he  had  considered  that  Islam  was  destined 
to  prevail  not  only  in  Arabia  but  in  other  lands.  Start- 
ing with  the  idea  that  his  revelation  was  only  a  later 
stage  of  that  which  had  taken  place  in  Judaism  and 
Christianity,  he  had  advanced  to  the  position  that  these 
were  false  religions,  and  his  own  the  only  true  one. 
Wherever  he  looked  in  the  world  he  could  see  no  true 
religion  but  his  own  ;  it  must  therefore  take  the  place  of 
all  others.  Accordingly  he  sent  embassies  from  Medina 
to  Heraclius  the  emperor  of  the  East,  to  the  king  of 
Persia,  to  the  governor  of  Egypt,  and  to  other  potentates, 
announcing  himself  to  be  the  "  Prophet  of  God,"  and 
calling  upon  them  to  give  up  their  idolatrous  worships 
and  return  to  the  religion  of  the  one  true  God.  These 
embassies  had  small  effect ;  but  Mahomet  was  prepared 
to  take  much  more  forcible  measures  in  order  to  spread 
the  faith.  War  against  infidels  being  one  of  the  stand- 
ing duties  of  the  faithful,  various  regulations  were  laid 
down  for  the  treatment  of  captives  and  the  disposal  of 
booty  in  such  wars.  God,  who  is  said  in  every  verse  to 
be  forgiving  and  merciful,  encourages  the  faithful  in 
such  passages  to  slay  and  rob,  and  to  make  concu- 
bines of  women  taken  in  sacred  wars.  At  the  moment 
of  his  death  an  expedition,  not  the  first,  was  ready  to 
start  against  the  Greek  power.  It  is  in  this  guise  that 
Islam  assumes  the  role  of  a  universal  religion. 

The  Duties  of  the  Moslem. — The  missionary  of  Islam 
requires  of  his  converts  nothing  very  difficult  either  in 
the  way  of  belief  or  in  the  way  of  action.  His  demands 
are  brief  and  precise.  They  consist  of  the  following  five 
points  : — i.  The  profession  of  belief  in  the  unity  of  God 
and  the  mission  of  Mahomet.  The  formula  runs:  "There 
is  no  God  but  Allah,  and  Mahomet  is  the  prophet  of 
Allah."     2.  Prayer.     This  consists  of  the  repetition  of  a 


CHAP.  XIII  Islam  239 

certain  form  of  words  at  five  separate  times  each  day, 
the  worshipper  standing  up  with  his  face  towards  Mecca. 
The  mosques  are  always  open  for  prayer,  and  there  is  a 
special  service  on  Friday,  the  day  of  the  week  chosen  by 
Mahomet  in  contradistinction  to  the  Jewish  Sabbath  and 
the  Christian  Sunday.  3.  Almsgiving.  This  is  done  on 
a  fixed  scale,  and  the  contributions  were,  in  Mahomet's 
time,  devoted  to  the  support  of  war  against  infidels. 
4.  Fasting.  This  takes  place  during  the  month  of 
Ramadan,  and  the  fast  is  very  strictly  observed.  5. 
The  Hagg  or  pilgrimage  to  Mecca. 

The  Koran  is  the  sacred  book  of  Islam.  The  name 
means  "reading";  see  p.  227.  Like  other  sacred  books, 
the  Koran  is  arranged  in  such  an  order  that  he  who 
reads  it  as  it  stands  finds  it  very  confused,  and  fails 
to  grasp  its  historical  meaning.  The  claim  to  divine 
inspiration  is  made  in  every  chapter  and  every  line  of 
it ;  God  himself  is  the  speaker.  But  the  divine  oracles 
refer  to  very  various  matters.  All  sorts  of  legal 
decisions,  military  orders,  injunctions  about  religious 
affairs,  legends  and  speculations,  have  a  place  in  it. 
Of  prediction  of  the  future,  indeed,  there  is  but  one 
instance  ;  the  prophet  disclaimed  the  power  to  work 
miracles,  and  held  that  no  wonders  beyond  those  of 
the  splendid  order  of  the  universe  are  necessary  to 
faith;  and  similarly  he  does  not  pose  as  a  foreteller, 
but  as  an  organ  of  the  divine  will  for  the  present.  As 
the  ruler  of  a  theocracy,  the  leader  of  armies,  the  judge 
in  many  a  civil  case,  the  guardian  of  the  manners  of  the 
people,  the  officiating  minister  in  public  worship,  and, 
let  it  also  be  mentioned,  the  head  of  a  very  peculiar 
domestic  establishment,  he  has  a  hundred  matters  of 
immediate  concern  to  attend  to ;  and  when  he  has 
formed  his  decision  on  any  of  these  matters,  it  takes 
its  place  in  the  Koran.  The  book  thus  produced  is 
far  from  being  an  attractive  one  ;  even  in  the  transla- 
tion of  Professor  Palmer^  it  can  afford  pleasure  to  no 

'  Sacred  Books  of  the  East,  vols.  vi.  and  xi. 


240  History  of  Religion  part  hi 

reader.  The  translation,  it  is  true,  loses  the  poetry 
and  music  of  the  original,  which  are  highly  spoken  of; 
but  the  main  obstacle  to  reading  the  Koran  is  its  want 
of  arrangement.  The  earliest  suras  (chapters  ;  literally 
courses  of  bricks)  stand  mostly  towards  the  end  of  the 
collection  ;  the  long  ones  in  the  beginning  and  middle 
are  later,  and  many  of  them  are  composite :  two  or 
several  chapters  have  been  joined  into  one.  When 
read  in  their  historical  order,  the  suras  can  be  read 
with  pleasure  by  the  student  as  showing  the  growth 
of  the  prophet's  ideas  and  of  his  cause.  The  earliest 
ones  are  short,  poetical,  and  intense.  These  are  the 
suras  which  threw  the  prophet  into  such  excitement 
and  distress  that  his  hair  turned  white.  They  are  full 
of  the  wonders  of  God  in  nature  and  in  history,  of  fiery 
denunciation  of  idolatry,  and  of  fearful  threatenings.  In 
later  pieces  we  come  to  long  legends  taken  chiefly  from 
the  Jewish  Haggadah  and  the  Christian  Apocrypha,  in 
which  the  prophet  displays  much  ignorance  of  the 
commonest  facts  of  the  Bible  history  ;  and  as  his  power 
increases  and  his  functions  multiply,  we  come  to  the 
miscellaneous  matters  spoken  of  above.  The  style, 
at  first  poetic  and  exalted,  becomes  afterwards  prosaic 
and  diffuse;  it  is  not  the  inspired  seer  who  speaks, 
but  the  statesman  or  the  judge ;  and  the  placing  of 
these  later  utterances  in  the  mouth  of  God  could  not 
deceive  the  original  hearers.  The  Koran,  like  the 
Vedas  and  the  Gathas  and  the  Jewish  Scriptures,  was 
exalted  in  later  stages  of  the  religion  to  the  highest  con- 
ceivable honours;  and  one  of  the  greatest  controversies 
of  Islam  raged  round  the  question  whether  it  had 
existed  from  eternity  and  was  uncreated. 

Islam  a  Universal  Religion. — What  is  most  remark- 
able about  Islam  is  the  rapidity  of  its  growth.  Mahomet 
begins  life  a  poor  and  lowly  herdsman,  and  at  his  death 
bequeaths  to  his  successors  a  kingdom  which  he  has 
formed,  and  which  is  shortly  to  prevail  over  all  its 
neighbours.     In  the  same  way  his  doctrine,  confined  at 


CHAP.  XIII  Islam  241 

first  to  a  small  circle  and    bitterly  opposed,  becomes 
within  half  a  century  the  faith  of  his  nation,  and  not 
only  of  his  nation,  but  of  many  other  lands.     Within 
that   brief   space   it   has   entered   on   the   career  of   a 
national   religion,   and    has    also    passed    beyond    the 
national   into   the   universal  stage,  at  which  only  two 
other  religions  have  arrived  at  all.     The  progress  which 
Christianity  took  centuries  to  accomplish,  Islam  accom- 
plished in  so  many  decades.     The  title  of  a  universal 
religion  cannot  .be  denied  to  it.     The  truth  which   it 
declared — the  doctrine  of  the  unity  and  the  omnipotence 
of  God,  and  of  the  responsibility  of  every  human  being 
to  his  Creator  and  Judge — is  one  which  does  not  belong 
to  any  particular  race  of  men,  but  to  all  men.     The 
attitude  of  soul  which  is  called  Islam — that  of  implicit 
surrender  to  the  great  God,  of  entire  acquiescence  in 
his  decrees  and  entire  obedience  to  his  will — is  good 
for  all.     All  should  be  called  to  take  an  earnest  view 
of  their  life  and  to  realise  their  deep  responsibilities  ; 
and  the  idea  expressed  by  the  title  given  to  God  on 
every  page   of  the   Koran,  "The    Merciful   and  Com- 
passionate," that  God  sympathises  with  the  aspirations 
and  efforts  of  his  servants,  and  that  they  may  look  up 
to  him  with  love  as  well  as  fear,  is  one  which  all  can 
understand  and  feel  helpful.      Especially  at  the  stage 
when  the  world  is  given  up  to  idolatry,  Islam  may  well 
rank  as  a  universal  religion ;   when  each  place  has  its 
idol,   each    nation    its    greater    idols,   religion    divides 
instead   of    uniting,   and   the    frivolous    and    senseless 
service  of  such  petty  deities  prevents  men  from  realising 
their  solemn  obligations  to  the  great  God  before  whom 
they  are  all  alike,  since  he  is  the  Governor  and  Judge 
of  all.     Islam  is  an  admirable  corrective  of  heathenism ; 
it  brings  the  scattered  and   bewildered  worshippers  of 
idols  together  in  one  lofty  faith  and  one  simple  rule. 

The  weakness  of  Islam  is  that  it  is  not  progressive. 
Its  ideas  are  bald  and  poor ;  it  grew  too  fast ;  its 
doctrines  and  forms  were  stereotyped  at  the  very  out- 

Q 


242  History  of  Religion  part  m 

set  of  its  career,  and  do  not  admit  of  change.  Its 
morality  is  that  of  the  stage  at  which  men  emerge 
from  idolatry,  and  does  not  advance  beyond  that  stage, 
so  that  it  perpetuates  institutions  and  customs  which 
are  a  drag  on  civilisation.  Mahomet's  Paradise,  in 
which  the  warrior  is  to  be  ministered  to  by  beauteous 
houris  (the  number  of  whom  is  not  mentioned),  may 
not  have  been  an  immoral  conception  in  his  day;  but 
it  is  so  now,  and  apparently  cannot  be  left  behind.  An 
admirable  instrument  for  the  discipline  of  populations 
at  a  low  stage  of  culture,  and  well  fitted  to  teach  them 
a  certain  measure  of  self-  restraint  and  piety,  Islam 
cannot  carry  them  on  to  the  higher  development  of 
human  life  and  thought.  It  is  repressive  of  freedom, 
and  the  reason  is  that  its  doctrine  is  after  all  no  more 
than  negative.  Allah  is  but  a  negation  of  other  gods ; 
there  is  no  store  of  positive  riches  in  his  character, 
he  does  not  sympathise  with  the  manifold  growth  of 
human  activity ;  the  inspiration  he  affords  is  a  negative 
inspiration,  an  impulse  of  hostility  to  what  is  over 
against  him,  not  an  impulse  to  strive  after  high  and 
fair  ideals.  He  remains  eternally  apart  upon  a  frosty 
throne ;  his  voice  is  heard,  but  he  cannot  condescend. 
He  does  not  enter  into  humanity,  and  therefore  cannot 
render  to  humanity  the  highest  services. 

Books  Recommended 

The  Life  of  Mahomet,  by  Sir  W.  Muir,  1858. 

Mohammed,    by    Wellhausen,     and     "The     Koran,"    by    Noldeke,    in 

Encyclopcedia  Britan7iica,  vol.  xvi. 
The    Preliminary   Discourse    prefixed   to   Sale's    Koran ;    and    Professor 

Palmer's  Introduction  in  S.  B.  E.,  vol.  vi. 
Islam,  by  J.  W.  H.  Stobart,  in  the  "Non-Christian  Religious  Systems" 

Series  of  the  S.  P. C.K. 
Der  Islam,  by  Houtsma,  in  De  la  Saussaye. 
Hughes,  A  Dictionary  of  Islam  (1885,  1896). 
Gell,  The  Faith  of  Islam,  Second  Edition,  1896. 
Stanley  Lane-Poole,  The  Speeches  and  I  able-talk  of  Mohammad,  1882;  the 

most  important  parts  of  the  Koran,  chronologically  arranged,  with  a 

very  useful  introduction. 
Margolioulh,   Mohammed  and  the  Rise  of  Islam,  1905. 


PART    IV 
THE    ARYAN    GROUP 


CHAPTER   XIV 

THE   ARYAN    RELIGION 

The  science  of  language  has  placed  it  beyond  dispute 
that  the  languages  of  the  leading  European  peoples 
are  genealogically  related  to  each  other,  and  that  the 
languages  of  India  and  of  Persia  also  belong  to  the 
same  family  of  speech.  The  Indo-European  languages, 
those,  namely,  of  the  higher  race  in  India,  and  of  the 
Persians,  and  those  of  the  Greeks,  Italians,  Celts, 
Germans,  Slavs,  Letts,  and  Albanians,  approach  each 
other  always  more  nearly  as  they  are  traced  upwards. 
Sanscrit  is  not  the  source  of  these  tongues  but  an  older 
sister  of  the  group  ;  the  mother  language,  which  the 
facts  prove  to  have  at  one  time  existed,  was  a  highly- 
inflected  speech,  and  is  perhaps  more  nearly  represented 
by  Lettic  than  by  Sanscrit ;  but  it  can  now  be  known 
only  by  a  study  of  the  common  features  of  its  surviving 
children. 

The  fact  that  the  peoples  named  above  are  related 
to  each  other  in  point  of  language  led  at  once,  when  it 
was  discovered,  to  the  conclusion  that  they  were  also  of 
the  same  race,  and  must  have  come  originally  from  the 
same  quarter  of  the  world.  Where,  then,  was  the  early 
home  of  the  undivided  Aryan  ^  race,  from  which  the 
swarms  first  issued  which  were  to  conquer  and  rule  the 

'  "Aryan"  was  the  name  of  the  conquering  race  of  India.  The  title 
"Indo-European  "  tells  us  that  the  race  now  dwells  in  India  and  in  Europe. 
"  Indo-Germanic  "  describes  the  group  by  its  Eastern,  and  what  is  supposed 
to  be  its  principal  Western,  member. 

245 


246  History  of  Religion  part  iv 

various  lands?  At  first  it  was  found  in  the  East;  the 
fact  that  Indian  civiHsation  was  much  earlier  in  time 
than  that  of  any  other  Aryan  people,  naturally  suggested 
this.  Professor  Max  Miiller  described  in  a  very  poetical 
way  how  the  European  as  well  as  the  Indian  must  find 
in  the  East  the  cradle  of  his  race.  From  the  high 
tableland  of  Asia,  it  was  held,  the  superior  races  came 
who  were  to  rule  nearly  the  whole  of  Europe,  while 
another  migration  descended  towards  Persia  and  the 
plains  of  India. 

The  theorj^,  however,  which  placed  the  home  of  the 
Aryans  on  the  inhospitable  steppes,  the  "  high  Pamere," 
of  Asia,  did  not  long  command  assent ;  and  attempts 
were  made  to  place  that  home  elsewhere,  in  the  valley 
of  the  Danube,  on  the  south  shores  of  the  Baltic,  or 
even  in. the  Scandinavian  peninsula.  The  conquest,  it 
is  argued,  cannot  have  come  from  the  East ;  it  is  much 
more  probable  that  Aryan  speech  and  custom  originated 
in  the  West,  where  it  has  the  larger  number  of  repre- 
sentatives, and  that  it  spread  eastward.  The  more 
extreme  step  has  also  been  taken  of  denying  that  the 
Aryans  are  related  to  each  other  at  all  in  point  of  race. 
Unity  of  language,  it  is  argued,  is  no  proof  of  unity  of 
race  —  a  glance  over  the  British  Empire  or  even  the 
British  Islands  is  enough  to  show  this.  It  is  main- 
tained, therefore,  that  the  relationship  of  the  Aryan 
peoples  is  not  one  of  race  but  only  of  language  and 
of  culture ;  the  word  Aryan  denotes  no  more  than  a 
certain  type  of  speech,  and  of  accompanying  civilisa- 
tion, which  spread  over  all  the  peoples  in  question  at 
a  very  early  time.  Aryan  language  and  civilisation 
laid  hold  of  a  number  of  races  not  otherwise  related 
to  each  other. 

The  view,  however,  still  prevails  that  the  various  lands 
where  Aryan  speech  and  culture  prevail  were  settled 
from  one  centre.  When  society  was  in  the  nomadic 
stage,  it  may  naturally  be  presumed  that  a  superior 
civilisation   which    had    established    itself    in    any   one 


CHAP.  XIV  '  The  Aryan  Religion  247 

quarter  of  the  world  would  be  cariied  by  wandering 
hordes  in  various  directions,  and  that  the  bearers  of 
the  new  civilisation  would  become  the  conquerors  and 
masters  of  the  countries  to  which  their  wanderings  led 
them.  And  there  is  now  some  agreement  on  the  part 
of  leading  authorities  as  to  the  quarter  of  the  world 
from  which  the  migrations  of  the  Aryans  proceeded. 
In  the  Southern  Steppes  of  Russia,  in  the  great  plains 
north  of  the  Black  Sea,  the  Caspian,  and  the  Sea  of 
Aral,  there  dwelt,  we  are  told,  in  times  far  before  the 
dawn  of  history,  hordes  rather  than  tribes  of  men,  who, 
though  they  had  originally  spoken  the  same  language, 
were  coming  to  differ  from  each  other  in  speech  and 
culture.  These  hordes  were  peoples  in  the  process  of 
formation.  It  was  natural  to  them  to  wander,  and  as 
each  wandered  farther  from  the  centre,  it  came  to  differ 
more  markedly  from  the  common  type.  Some  of  these 
went  southwards  and  eastwards  to  Persia  and  India; 
others  went  westward,  to  conquer  and  possess  the 
countries  of  Europe.^ 

The  Aryan  question  lies  at  the  threshold  of  the 
history  of  each  of  the  Aryan  peoples,  and  has  to  be 
met  in  the  study  of  each  of  the  religions.  It  must  be 
confessed  that  the  world  now  knows  less  on  this  point 
than  it  thought  it  did  a  generation  ago.  The  difference 
between  the  Semitic  and  the  Aryan  spirit  is  real  and 
substantial,  as  will  appear  from  the  study  of  the  Aryan 
religions,  but  it  is  more  important  as  well  as  more 
possible  to  know  these  well  in  their  individual  char- 
acter than  to  have  a  correct  theory  of  their  historical 
relation  to  each  other.  The  student  ought,  however,  to 
be  informed  as  to  the  course  of  a  deeply  interesting 
enquiry. 

^  Prehistotic  Antiquities  of  the  Aryan  Peoples ;  Schrader  and  Jevons 
(Griffin,  1890).  This  is  the  EngHsh  of  Schrader's  Sprachvergkichtmg  und 
Urgeschichte.  Compare  Dr.  E.' Meyer's  History  of  Antiquity,  vol.  i.  book 
vi.  Dr.  Isaac  Taylor's  Origin  of  the  Aryans  gives  a  compendious  account 
of  the  question,  concluding  against  the  unity  of  the  Aryans  in  point  of 
race. 


248  History  of  Religion  part  iv 

The  civilisation  of  the  Aryans  was  primitive  enough. 
The  following  is  from  Dr.  Taylor  : — 

The  undivided  Aryans  were  a  pastoral  people,  who  wandered 
with  their  herds  as  the  Hebrew  patriarchs  wandered  in  Canaan. 
Dogs,  cattle,  and  sheep  had  been  domesticated,  but  not  the  pig, 
the  horse,  the  goat,  or  the  ass  ;  and  domestic  poultry  were  un- 
known. The  fibres  of  certain  plants  were  plaited  into  mats,  but 
wool  was  not  woven,  and  the  skins  of  beasts  were  scraped  with 
stone  knives,  and  sewed  together  into  garments  with  sinews  by 
the  aid  of  needles  of  bone,  wood,  or  stone. 

Their  food  consisted  of  flesh  and  milk,  which  was  not  yet  made 
into  cheese  or  butter.  Mead,  prepared  from  the  honey  of  wild 
bees,  was  the  only  intoxicating  drink,  both  beer  and  wine  being 
unknown.  Salt  was  unknown  to  the  Asiatic  branch  of  the  Aryans, 
but  its  use  had  spread  rapidly  among  the  European  branches  of 
the  race.  In  winter  they  lived  in  pits  dug  in  the  earth  and  roofed 
over  with  poles  covered  with  turf,  or  plastered  with  cow  dung. 
In  summer  they  lived  in  rude  waggons  or  in  huts  made  of  the 
branches  of  trees.  Of  metals,  native  copper  may  have  been  beaten 
into  ornaments,  but  tools  and  weapons  were  mostly  of  stone. 
Bows  were  made  of  the  wood  of  the  yew,  .  .  .  trees  were  hollowed 
out  for  canoes  by  stone  axes,  aided  by  the  use  of  fire. 

According  to  Hehn,  the  old  or  sick  were  killed,  wives  were 
obtained  by  purchase  or  capture,  infants  were  exposed  or  killed. 
After  a  time,  with  tillage,  came  the  possession  of  property,  and 
established  custom  grew  slowly  into  law.  Their  religious  ideas 
were  based  on  magic  and  superstitious  terrors,  the  powers  of 
nature  had  as  yet  assumed  no  anthropomorphic  forms,  the  great 
name  of  Dyaus,  which  afterwards  came  to  mean  God,  signified 
only  the  bright  sky.  They  counted  on  their  fingers,  but  they  had 
not  attained  to  the  idea  of  any  number  higher  than  one  hundred.^ 

These  sketches  of  the  early  Aryan  certainly  attest 
more  vigour  than  refinement ;  and  it  takes  some  effort 
to  realise  that  those  who  lived  in  this  way  had  already 
made  much  progress,  and  that  these  early  arts  and 
institutions  were  full  of  promise.  Savage  as  the  early 
Aryan  is,  he  is  better  than  his  neighbours,  and  has 
made  a  good  start  in  the  way  of  civilisation.  His 
family  arrangements,  especially,  are  fitted  to  survive 
and  to  develop.  The  early  domestic  architecture  of 
the  Aryan  countries,  while  it  belongs  to  a  much  later 

^  Origin  of  the  Aryans,  p.  188. 


CHAP  XIV  The  Aryan  Religion  249 

period,  yet  gives  good  evidence  that  the  patriarchal 
ideal  of  the  family  was  part  of  the  common  inheritance. 
In  every  country  they  conquered  the  Aryans  lived  in 
large  patriarchal  households.  The  sons,  with  their 
wives  and  children,  remained  under  their  father's  roof, 
the  father  being  judge  and  priest  of  this  domestic 
community.  We  can  specify  other  features  of  the 
society  connected  with  this  type  of  household.  As 
the  family  increases  and  becomes  too  large  to  dwell 
under  one  roof,  another  house  is  built,  in  which  son 
or  grandson,  with  his  wife,  founds  a  new  family.  Thus 
a  group  of  families  arises,  all  related  to  each  other  by 
blood,  and  in  a  position  of  equality,  but  looking  to  the 
original  house  as  their  centre.  This  type  of  society 
must  have  been  carried  to  India  by  the  Aryan  invaders, 
who  there  set  up  patriarchal  establishments  in  houses 
which  are  similar  in  arrangement  to  those  of  North 
Holland,  of  Iceland,  or  of  early  England.  The  men 
who  lived  in  this  way  were  not  agriculturists,  they 
were  shepherds  and  huntsmen,  and  when  they  settled 
in  a  district  they  were  wont  to  force  the  former  dwellers 
in  it  to  till  the  land  for  them  as  their  inferiors.^ 

It  is  this  type  of  civilisation  which  overspread  the 
lands  in  early  times,  and  by  its  coming  created  in 
most  instances  a  nev/  world.  Some  of  the  Aryan 
peoples  made  more  rapid  progress  than  others.  They 
passed  early  into  the  age  of  metals,  and  appear  before 
us  at  the  dawn  of  history  with  fully-formed  institutions, 
which  bear  the  impress  of  patriarchal  ideas.  Others 
remained  longer  in  the  stone  age,  and  only  in  historic 
times  received  the  impulse  which  caused  them  to 
advance  to  the  rank  of  nations.  The  arts  and  inven- 
tions which  are  found  in  many  or  in  all  of  them  are 
not  necessarily  a  common  inheritance  from  the  un- 
divided Aryan  age.  Many  of  them  may  have  come 
into  being  in  each  of  the  lands  independently,  or  one 

^  See  two  recent  works  by  Mr.  G.   L.  Gonime,  The  Village  Community 
and  Ethnology  in  Folklore  ;  also  Hearn's  Aryan  Household. 


250  History  of  Religion  part  iv 

Aryan  people  may  have  borrowed  them  from  another 
at  a  later  time.  Starting  from  the  common  stock  of 
civilisation,  the  various  races  worked  it  out  each  in  a 
way  of  its  own,  and  often,  as  we  shall  see,  with  wonder- 
ful similarities. 

Is  it  possible  to  give  any  description  of  the  religion 
the  Aryans  had  in  common  before  they  developed  it 
in  different  ways  in  their  various  lands?  We  can  no 
longer,  following  Mr.  Max  Miiller,  look  to  India  to 
tell  us  what  was  the  common  Aryan  religion.  Indian 
religion,  when  we  first  become  acquainted  with  it,  has 
already  grown  into  an  elaborate  priestly  system,  and 
is  evidently  at  a  much  later  stage  of  Aryan  develop- 
ment than  the  rustic  cults,  with  which  we  have  a  good 
deal  of  acquaintance,  in  various  European  lands.  If, 
however,  we  cannot  follow  the  great  German  scholar 
in  this,  we  gladly  use  his  words  on  another  aspect  of 
the  subject,  when  he  is  showing  the  etymological 
identity  of  the  chief  god  of  the  Aryan  peoples. 
\  I  In  his  Lectures  on  the  Science  of  Language,  vol.  ii.  p. 
468,  he  tells  us  that  "  Zeus,  the  most  sacred  name  in 
Greek  mythology,  is  the  same  word  as  Dyaus  in 
Sanscrit,  Jovis  or  Ju  in  Jupiter  in  Latin,  Tiw  in  Anglo- 
Saxon,  preserved  in  Tiwsdseg,  Tuesday,  the  day  of  the 
Eddie  god  Tyr ;  Zio  in  old  High-German. 

"  This  word  was  framed,"  he  says,  "  once  and  once 
only ;  it  was  not  borrowed  by  the  Greeks  from  the 
Hindus,  nor  by  the  Romans  and  Germans  from  the 
Greeks.  It  must  have  existed  before  the  ancestors  of 
those  primeval  races  became  separate  in  language  and 
religion ;  before  they  left  their  common  pastures  to 
migrate  to  the  right  hand  and  to  the  left.  .  .  .  Here, 
then,  in  this  venerable  word,  we  may  look  for  some  of 
the  earliest  religious  thoughts  of  our  race."^ 

In  this  instance  etymology  admittedly  points  out 
one  of  the  principal  features  of  the  common  Aryan 
religions.     But  if  we  hope  that  etymology  will  reveal 

^  See  also  Mr.  Miiller's  Hibbert  Lectures,  and  his  Biographies  of  Words. 


CHAP.  XIV  The  Aryan  Religion  251 

to  us  many  further  instances  of  the  same  kind,  and 
introduce  us  to  the  whole  Pantheon  of  the  Aryans, 
we  shall  be  disappointed.  There  are  one  or  two  more 
cases  of  etymological  agreement  between  the  gods  of 
India  and  those  of  Europe/  but  the  agreement  is  in 
some  of  these  cases  no  more  than  etymological.  The 
Tiw  or  Tyr  of  the  Teutonic  mythology  does  not 
correspond  in  office  or  character  with  Zeus  or  Jupiter, 
though  the  names  are  etymologically  akin.  The  agree- 
ment does  not  extend  to  all  the  religions  in  question, 
nor  does  it  extend  in  any  two  religions  to  all  their 
gods ;  most  of  the  gods  of  Europe  have  no  parallels 
in  India.  The  evidence  of  etymology,  therefore,  tells 
us  but  little  of  that  early  religion  of  which  we  are  in 
search.  But  if  we  consider  the  views  and  habits  of 
the  barbarous  shepherd-huntsman,  who  is  now  seen  to 
be  the  typical  figure  of  common  Aryanism,  we  need 
not  seek  long  before  we  find  something  that  was 
common  to  all  the  Aryan  faiths.  The  patriarchal 
household  has  a  religion  which  belongs  to  itself,  and 
which  is  the  working  bond  of  union  of  its  members. 
The  hearth  is  its  altar,  because  the  forefathers  of  the 
house  lie  buried  under  it,  or  for  another  reason.  These 
forefathers  certainly  are  its  gods.  This  hearth-cult  has 
for  its  priest  the  father  of  the  family  ;  he  in  his  turn  will 
be  gathered  to  his  fathers  if  he  has  a  legitimate  son 
to  do  the  last  rites  for  him.  No  one  but  members  of 
the  family  can  partake  in  the  domestic  worship,  all 
unconnected  with  the  family  by  blood  must  be  kept  at 
a  distance  from  these  rites.     This  is  not  a  religion  in 

^  The  principal  are  the  following : — 

1 .  Dyaus,  god  of  the  sky,  see  above. 

2.  Sans.  Ushas,  goddess  of  dawn  ;  Gr.  17WS ;  Lat.  aurora;   Lith.  auszra  ; 

A.-S.  eostra. 

3.  Sans.  Agni,  fire,  god  of  fire;  Lat.  ignis;  Lith.  ugnis ;  O.-S.  ogni. 

4.  Sans.  Surya,  sun ;  Lat.  sol ;  Gr.  -rjeXios,  also  Hielpios ;  Cymr.  seul. 

5.  Sans.  Mas,  moon ;  Gr.  fi'iqvr] ;  Lat.  mena  ;  Lith.  menu. 

Mars  =  Maruts,  Manu  =  Minos  =Mannus,  Varuna  =  Ouranos,  and  other 
equations  formerly  brought  forward,  are  not  now  relied  on  by  etymo- 
logists. 


252  History  of  Religion  part  iv 

which  the  individual  counts  anything  for  his  own  sake, 
any  more  than  totemistic  religion  is ;  in  both  it  is  the 
community  alone  that  serves  the  deity,  in  the  one  case, 
those  acknowledging  the  same  totem,  in  the  second, 
those  united  by  blood  in  the  same  family.  In  totemism 
the  individual  sacrifices  himself  to  the  tribe ;  here  he  is 
nothing  apart  from  his  family.  Aryan  piety  is  family 
religion  pure  and  simple.  It  fosters  sentiments  which 
have  been  the  strength  of  Aryan  society  in  all  lands. 
It  makes  family  life  a  sacred  thing,  lends  to  all  domestic 
ties  the  highest  sanction,  and  causes  the  mere  mention 
of  "hearth  and  home"  to  be  the  strongest  incentive  to 
valour  and  self-denial.  Even  in  the  wild-beast  ferocity 
with  which  early  men  defend  their  homes  against  the 
intrusion  of  strangers,  the  germs  of  lofty  domestic  and 
patriotic  virtues  may  be  seen.  Thus  ancestor-worship, 
which  is  a  part  of  the  very  beginnings  of  human  religion, 
is  a  more  effective  force  among  the  Aryans  than  any- 
where else.  In  Egypt  and  China  that  worship  is  a 
highly  artificial  thing,  and  has  lost  much  of  its  original 
force.  In  Egypt  it  is  the  fortunes  of  the  dead  that  are 
most  thought  of;  in  China  the  cult  has  been  smoothed 
down  and  deprived,  according  to  the  character  of  the 
people,  of  its  intenser  motives.  Among  the  Aryans  it 
combines  actively  with  strong  family  feeling,  causing 
them  to  cling  with  an  extreme  tenacity  to  their  own 
gods  and  their  own  worship.^ 

But  those  of  whom  we  are  speaking  worshipped  other 
gods  besides  those  of  the  household.  The  second  great 
characteristic  of  Aryan  religion  is  its  adoration  of  gods 
who  are  neither  local  nor  tribal,  but  universal.  Dyaus,  , 
the  sky,  the  heaven-god,  can  be  worshipped  anywhere ; 
so  can  the  earth,  so  can  the  heavenly  twins,  who  were 
objects  of  early  Aryan  religion,  so  can  the  sun  and 
moon.     Not  that  the  Aryans  always  remembered  that 

^  The  comparative  absence  of  ancestor-worship  among  the  Greeks  leads 
Dr.  Schrader  to  doubt  whether  their  religion  is  Aryan.  The  Semites  and 
the  Greeks  occupy  the  same  position  in  this  respect  (see  pp.  166,  290). 


CHAP.  XIV  The  Aryan  Religion  253 

these  beings  were  not  local  or  tribal.  The  god  of 
heaven  could  be  the  god  of  a  particular  place  too, 
having  a  special  name  there;  or  he  could  be  appro- 
priated by  a  tribe  who  gave  him  a  title  as  their  own 
particular  patron.  Each  family  could  have  its  own 
heaven-god  as  well  as  its  own  hearth-god.  Nor  are 
we  to  think  that  when  they  worshipped  beings  who 
could  be  found  in  every  place,  the  Aryans  overlooked 
the  sacred  places,  and  the  sacred  objects  worshipped 
formerly.  They  had  themselves  risen  out  of  savagery, 
and  still  held  many  of  the  ideas  of  savages.  Though 
they  had  a  few  great  gods  they  could  still  believe  in  a 
large  number  of  smaller  ones.  The  tree,  the  stream,  still 
had  its  spirit  for  them,  the  cave  or  the  dark  fissure  its 
bad  demon.  And  many  a  piece  of  magic  did  they 
practise,  such  as  the  rain-charm  which  would  cause 
even  the  highest  god  to  send  what  was  needed.  The 
world  was  well  peopled  with  gods,  and  to  keep  on 
good  terms  with  them  all  was,  no  doubt,  a  matter  that 
required  much  attention  and  skill. 

Other  features  which  have  been  stated  to  be  character- 
istic of  Aryan  religion  are  its  non-priestly  character, 
and  the  fact  that  its  gods  are  generally  arranged  in  a 
monarchical  pantheon.  But  neither  of  these  constitutes 
a  specific  difference  of  the  kind  we  are  in  search  of. 
All  primitive  religions  are  non  -  priestly  ;  a  religion 
becomes  priestly  at  a  certain  stage  of  its  growth, 
when  it  is  organised  separately  from  the  state.  The 
monarchical  pantheon,  too,  such  as  that  of  Homer  and 
of  the  Eddas,  is  an  indication,  not  of  the  genius  of  a 
religion,  but  of  its  having  reached  the  systematising 
stage,  and  of  the  political  ideas  according  to  which  the 
system  is  drawn  up.  The  Aryan  religions,  it  is  true, 
arrange  their  gods  when  the  time  comes  to  do  so,  after 
the  pattern  of  an  Aryan  patriarchal  establishment,  the 
father  at  the  head,  his  sons  and  daughters  near  him,  the 
servants  in  attendance,  the  unorganised  host  of  spirits, 
nymphs  and  elves,  outside.     But  to  know  the  original 


254  History  of  Religion  part  iv 

character  of  the  rehgion  it  is  less  important  to  ask  how 
the  pantheon  is  arranged,  than  what  gods  are  worshipped, 
and  how  they  are  related  to  man.  And  the  point  which 
stands  out  clearly  is  that  while  Semitic  religion  is  purely 
tribal  and  local,  there  is  an  element  in  Aryan  religion 
which  naturally  transcends  these  limits.  On  Semitic 
ground  the  body  with  whom  the  god  transacts  is  the 
tribe,  the  link  is  that  of  blood  which  connects  all  the 
members  of  the  tribe  with  their  divine  head  or  ancestor. 
In  Aryan  religion  also  blood  counts  for  much.  The 
family  altar  is  the  seat  of  worship,  and  he  who  has  been 
cast  out  of  his  own  family  cannot  worship  anywhere. 
The  family  gods  are  most  thought  of,  no  doubt,  and 
exercise  immense  power  in  the  ways  we  have  mentioned. 
But  the  worship  of  which  blood  is  the  tie  is  not  to  the 
Aryan,  as  to  the  Semite,  the  whole  of  religion.  There 
are  beings  aloft  as  well  as  beings  on  the  earth  and 
under  the  earth,  and  the  worship  of  these  beings  is 
wider  than  the  family.  The  family  may  address  Heaven 
by  a  special  private  name,  or  at  a  particular  spot,  but 
Heaven  itself  was  above  all  these  titles  and  places. 
The  spirits  of  the  household  made,  as  all  the  Semitic 
gods  do,  for  separation,  but  the  gods  above  made  for 
union,  and  as  any  community  grew,  the  upper  gods,  who 
were  worshipped  by  all  its  members  alike,  became  more 
lofty  and  more  important.  Thus  we  may  agree  with 
Mr.  Gomme  when  he  speaks  {Ethnology  of  Folklore, 
p.  68)  of  the  emancipation  of  the  Aryans  from  the 
principle  of  local  worship,  and  says  that  the  rise  of  the 
conception  of  gods  who  could  and  did  accompany  the 
tribes  wheresoever  they  travelled,  was  "the  greatest 
triumph  or  the  Aryan  race." 

Farther  than  this  it  may  be  dangerous  to  go  in  a  field 
so  full  of  uncertainty.  In  all  Aryan  worships  there  are 
sacrifices  of  various  kinds  and  degrees  of  importance. 
The  horse  sacrifice  appears  in  several  of  the  nations 
as  one  of  distinction,  but  human  sacrifice  was  most 
important  of  all,  though  in   each  of  the  Aryan  lands 


CHAP.  XIV  The  Aryan  Religion  255 

commutations  are  made  for  it  at  a  very  early  stage.  The 
strife  of  Aryan  with  non-Aryan  religions  gave  rise  to 
many  superstitions ;  after  the  conquest  the  gods  of  the 
latter  often  became  the  bad  gods  or  demons  of  the 
former,  the  ministers  of  the  defeated  cult  were  regarded 
as  sorcerers  or  witches,  the  dethroned  gods  made  many 
an  attempt  to  come  back  to  their  seats,  and  to  revive 
disused  practices.  But  a  religion  based,  as  we  have 
seen  the  Aryan  to  be,  in  the  family  affections  is  destined 
to  rise  as  civilisation  advances.  It  will  be  found  that 
the  Aryan  draws  a  less  absolute  distinction  than  the 
Semite  between  the  human  and  the  divine.  To  the 
Semite  God  is,  broadly  speaking,  a  master,  or  Lord, 
whose  word  is  a  command,  in  regard  to  whom  man  is  a 
subject,  a  slave.  To  the  Aryan  the  relation  is  a  freer 
one.  His  god  is  more  human,  and  art  and  imagination 
can  do  more  in  his  service. 

E.  Siecke,  Die  religion  d.  Indogermatien,  1S97. 

C.   F.   Keary,    Outlines  of  Piitnitivi   Belief  among  ihe  Indo-European 
Races,    1SS2. 


CHAPTER   XV 

THE   TEUTONS 

The  Aryans  in  Europe.  —  There  is  more  than  one 
European  people  which  before  it  was  touched  by  Roman 
civilisation  had  remained  for  an  indefinite  period — a 
period  to  be  measured  probably  rather  by  millenniums 
than  by  centuries — in  the  state  of  society  described  in 
last  chapter  (p.  249,  sqq^  as  occurring  when  the  Aryans 
dwelt  among  those  whom  they  had  conquered.  In 
various  lands  alike  we  meet  with  the  combination  of  the 
patriarchal  household  with  the  village,  the  combination 
of  agricultural  with  pastoral  life,  to  which  the  Aryans 
early  settled  down  among  non  -  Aryan  populations. 
This  type  of  society,  which  is  the  basis  of  feudalism,  is 
recognised  alike  in  India  and  in  Germany.  It  stretches 
far  back  into  the  past,  and  may  even  be  recognised  in 
some  quarters  at  the  present  day. 

As  with  civilisation  so  with  religion.  The  early  faith 
of  the  Slavs,  the  Celts,  and  the  Teutons  is  now  generally 
regarded  as  best  representing  that  of  the  Aryans.  It 
was  a  religion  in  which  rite  and  belief  were  indefinite 
and  variable  compared  with  those  of  the  later  Aryan 
faiths  of  India  and  of  Southern  Europe,  there  being 
neither  a  regular  priesthood  nor  the  use  of  writing  to 
impart  fixity  to  religious  forms.  The  river,  the  fountain, 
and  the  aged  oak,  each  had  its  legend  and  its  observ- 
ance of  unknown  antiquity.  The  pre-Aryan  and  the 
Aryan  elements  of  religion  acted  and  reacted  on  each 

256 


CHAP.  XV  The  Teutons  257 

other,  the  Aryan,  no  doubt,  bemg  the  element  of  pro- 
gress, but  blending  with  the  other  in  indistinguishable 
mixture.  The  spirits  of  ancestors  lived  in  the  belief  and 
the  practice  of  posterity ;  a  thousand  unseen  agents  in 
the  sky,  and  in  the  earth,  and  under  the  earth  were 
believed  in  and  treated  according  to  tradition,  fed  or 
flouted,  bribed  or  exorcised,  as  occasion  suggested. 
New  gods  appeared,  or  old  ones  were  combined  into 
new,  or  a  god  migrated  from  one  province  to  another. 
Here  also  myths  and  rituals  were  formed  by  various 
processes.  But  a  more  constant  growth  of  belief  took 
place  in  connection  with  some  gods  as  larger  social 
organisms  came  into  existence,  village  communities 
combining  into  tribes,  tribes  into  nations.  The  great 
gods  of  heaven,  whatever  the  history  of  their  early 
growth,  proved  specially  fitted  to  unite  together  clans 
and  peoples.  These  beings  received  different  names  in 
different  countries.  Their  early  history,  no  doubt,  was 
not  the  same  in  all,  yet  in  each  mythology  there  were 
figures  and  stories  which  occurred  also  in  others,  whether 
in  consequence  of  parallel  growth  out  of  similar  circum- 
stances in  each  land,  or  from  a  process  of  borrowing  at 
a  later  time,  or  from  both,  we  need  not  try  to  decide. 

We  give  a  short  account  of  the  religion  of  the 
Germans.  That  of  the  Celts,  which  may  be  studied 
in  the  Hibbert  Lectures  of  Professor  Rhys,^  or  that 
of  the  Slavs  (of  which  there  is  an  excellent  short 
summary  by  Mr.  W.  R.  MorfiU  in  Religious  Systems  of 
the  World),  would  have  equally  well  served  the  purpose 
of  exhibiting  an  Aryan  religion  at  a  low  stage  of 
development,  and  held  by  a  people  not  thoroughly 
compacted  into  a  nation.  The  religion  of  the  Teutons 
has  the  advantage  for  our  study  over  these  others, 
that  it  remained  longer  unsuppressed  by  Christianity, 
and  in  its  Scandinavian  branch  put  forth  a  vigorous 
original   growth   in  comparatively   recent   times.     The 

^  Lectures  on  the  Origin  and  Growth  of  Religion  as  illustrated  by  Celtic 
Heathendom.     iS86. 

R 


258  History  of  Religion  part  iv 

latest  paganism  which  flourished  in  Europe,  it  is  also 
the  religion  of  our  ancestors,  on  which  the  Christianity 
of  the  Northern  lands  was  grafted,  and  many  a  survival 
of  which  may  still  be  recognised  in  our  own  land. 
It  therefore  possesses  for  us  even  in  itself  considerable 
interest. 

Of  the  ancient  Germans,  of  the  dwellers  in  the  basins 
of  the  Rhine  and  the  Danube,  we  have  accounts  by 
Caesar  and  by  Tacitus.^  After  this  there  is  a  dearth 
of  information ;  the  Christian  missionaries  to  the 
Germans  thought  it  their  duty  to  cover  the  former 
beliefs  and  rites  of  their  converts  in  oblivion,  and 
abstained  from  giving  information  about  them.  What 
we  know  is  drawn  from  Church  writers.  The  Eddas 
belong  to  a  much  more  developed  stage  of  Teutonic 
life;  they  tell  their  own  tale,  which  will  be  noticed 
in  its  turn. 

The  early  Germans  dwelt  in  scattered  settlements 
surrounded  by  the  great  forests  and  marshes  which 
then  covered  Central  Europe.  Every  one  has  read  the 
description  of  the  brave  and  warlike  people  of  whom 
the  Romans  justly  stood  so  much  in  awe,  and  knows 
about  their  fierce  blue  eyes  and  their  fair  hair,  their 
tall  stature,  their  battle-cries  and  charges,  their  hardy 
habits  and  strict  morals.  As  the  Roman  writers  describe 
them,  they  are  by  no  means  savages.  They  do  not 
live  in  towns,  but  migrate  from  one  spot  to  another, 
the  community  cultivating  the  land  it  takes  possession 
of,  on  a  system  of  common  ownership  with  rotation  of 
occupants.  The  women  did  the  hard  work,  Tacitus 
says  ;  the  men  spent  their  time  in  the  chase  and  in 
fighting.  They  had  an  organisation  beyond  that  of  the 
village,  being  arranged  in  what  we  may  call  hundreds 
and  shires,  each  district  having  to  furnish  so  many 
men  for  war,  electing  its  own  heads  and  holding  meet- 
ings  for  various    purposes.      Amidst   these   local   and 

*  Caesar,  B.  Gall,  vi.  21.     Tacitus,  Ger mania. 


CHAP.  XV  The  Teutons  «      259 

tribal  divisions  they  did  not  forget  that  they  were  a 
nation  different  from  other  nations,  and  invasion  found 
them  a  united  people.  The  religious  expression  of 
this  is  to  be  found  in  the  legend  which  represents  the 
three  great  divisions  of  the  nation  as  descended  alike 
from  the  god  Mannus,  son  of  the  earth-born  Tuisco ; 
hymns  were  sung  to  the  latter  as  the  father  of  the 
German  race.  It  was  by  hymns  that  this  people 
remembered  things  which  were  important. 

The  Early  German  Gods. — There  is  a  national  god, 
then ;  and  other  gods  of  whom  Tacitus  tells  us  are 
national  too,  not  local  or  tribal.  The  tribes  to  the 
south  of  the  Baltic  worship  Herthus,  which,  Tacitus 
says,  is  their  name  for  Terra  Mater,  Mother  Earth. 
The  other  gods  he  mentions  are  called  by  Roman 
names.  They  worship  Mercury,  he  says,  as  their 
principal  god  ;  on  certain  days  they  worship  him  with 
human  sacrifices.  They  also  worship  Mars  and  Hercules 
with  animal  victims  ;  and  a  particular  tribe,  the  Suevi, 
worship  I  sis.  Caesar  says  the  Germans  worship  the 
sun,  and  Vulcan,  and  the  moon.  Tacitus  mentions 
other  German  gods  ;  the  two  statements  are  both  true. 
Tacitus  gives  the  German  gods  Roman  names  accord- 
ing to  a  common  practice  of  antiquity,  which  has  been 
the  source  of  much  confusion  ;  we  shall  see  afterwards 
how  the  Romans  identified  the  gods  of  Greece  also 
with  those  of  Rome. 

The  equation  which  Tacitus  gives  of  the  German 
gods  with  Latin  ones  is  still  in  daily  use  in  the  names 
of  the  days  of  the  week.  The  Romans  applied  the 
names  of  the  planets,  which  were  the  names  of  their 
own  gods,  to  the  days  of  the  week  as  early  as  the  first 
Christian  century ;  and  in  Germany  the  days  were 
called  after  the  German  gods  supposed  to  answer  to 
the  Roman  gods  in  question.  Half  Europe  to  this 
day  calls  the  days  of  the  week  after  the  Roman,  and 
the  other  half  after  the  German  gods.  We  give  the 
Latin  names  with  the  modern  French  and  over  against 


26o  History  of  Religion  part  iv 

them  the  English,  in  which  the  names  of  the  German 
gods  appear  more  clearly  than  in  modern  German : — 

Dies  Solis,  the  Sun's  day  =  Sunday.     (The  French   Dimanche  is 

from  Dominicus^  the  Lord's  Day.) 
Dies  Lunae  (Lundi)=  Monday  or  Moon's  day. 
Dies  Martis  (Mardi)  =  Tuesday,  the  day  of  Tiw  or  Ziu. 
Dies  Mercurii  (Mercredi)  =  Wednesday,  the  day  of  Wodan. 
Dies  Jovis  (Jeudi)  =  Thursday,  the  day  of  Thor.     In  German  this  is 

Do7inerstag^  the  day  of  Donar  =  Thor. 
Dies  Veneris  (Vendredi)=  Friday,  the  day  of  Freya. 
Dies  Saturni  retains  the  Latin  god's  name  in  our  Saturday.     (The 

French  Samedi  is  derived  from  Sabbath.) 

These  Teutonic  names  for  the  days  of  the  week  are 
common  to  all  the  branches  of  Teutonic  speech,  and 
must  have  a  high  antiquity.  They  tell  us  what  gods 
the  Germans  had  in  early  times,  and  to  what  Roman 
gods  these  were  believed  to  correspond ;  but  it  would 
be  a  vain  endeavour  to  attempt  to  deduce  from  this, 
or  indeed  from  any  early  information  we  possess  on 
the  subject,  the  origin  and  nature  of  these  gods.  From 
Grimm's  laborious  study  of  the  question  {German 
Mythology,  vol.  i.)  we  gather  that  it  is  a  matter  mainly 
of  speculation  what  it  was  in  Wodan  that  led  the 
Romans  to  identify  him  with  their  Mercury.  Thor, 
who  is  identified  with  Jupiter,  was  probably  a  sky-god, 
while  Tiw  or  Ziu  (whom  etymology  identifies  with 
Zeus,  not  Mars)  was  a  god  of  war,  and  Freya,  like 
Venus,  had  to  do  with  female  beauty.  We  come  to 
know  more  of  these  gods  when  we  find  them  in  the 
Eddas,  but  it  is  scarcely  legitimate  to  fill  in  the 
South  German  gods  of  the  first  century  from  the  North 
German  gods  of  the  same  names  of  the  eleventh  or 
twelfth.  We  reserve,  therefore,  our  description  of  the 
German  gods  till  we  come  to  the  Northern  mythology. 

The  Roman  writers  do  not  furnish  any  accurate  idea 
of  the  working-  relig-ion  of  the  Germans  of  their  day. 
Csesar  says  they  were  not  so  much  under  the  guidance 
of  priests  as  the  Gauls  were,  and  that  they  were  not 
greatly   addicted    to   sacrifice;    neither   statement   can 


CHAP.    XV 


The  Teutons  261 


be  received  without  scrutiny.  Tacitus  idealises  the 
untutored  savage  as  Rousseau  does,  in  order  to  rebuke 
the  vices  of  a  luxurious  civiHsation  ;  but  his  statements 
of  actual  facts  may  be  trusted.  Knowledge  recently 
acquired  of  early  forest-cults  disposes  us  to  trust  him 
when  he  speaks,  as  he  does  more  than  once,  of  the 
peculiar  sacredness  the  Germans  attached  to  woods  and 
groves.  He  is  idealising  when  he  says,  '•  They  did  not 
confine  their  gods  in  walls  nor  represent  them  under  the 
likeness  of  men,  being  led  thereto  by  considering  the 
greatness  of  the  heavenly  beings."  A  few  centuries 
later  at  least  we  find  Christian  bishops  busy  destroying 
temples  of  German  heathenism  and  burning  images 
found  in  them.  Undoubtedly,  however,  the  great 
sanctuary  of  a  district  was  frequently,  as  he  represents, 
in  the  recesses  of  a  wood.  Under  a  mighty  tree  a  tribe 
would  hold  its  meetings  and  sit  in  judgment  and  in 
council ;  and  there  were  sacred  groves  in  which  no 
human  foot  might  stray,  where  the  god  was  supposed 
to  dwell,  where  great  sacrifices  both  of  animal  and  of 
human  victims  took  place,  where  the  boughs  were  hung 
with  the  bones  of  former  sacrifices  which  in  war  were 
carried  forth  at  the  head  of  the  tribe  as  its  sacred 
standards.  This  was  done  by  the  priests,  who  accom- 
panied the  host  to  battle,  and  were  charged  at  such 
a  time  with  the  infliction  of  all  necessary  punishments, 
since  they  represented  the  god  who  was  supposed  to  be 
personally  present  as  commander.  The  priests  had  to 
work  the  auguries  when  consulted  on  matters  of  state ; 
on  private  matters  the  paterfamilias  might  do  this 
himself  The  priests  also  had  charge  of  the  sacred 
white  horses,  by  whose  neighing  the  will  of  the  deity 
became  known.  Several  women  are  also  mentioned  as 
having  enjoyed  the  reputation  of  sacred  personages ; 
and  "even  in  their  wives  they  considered  that  there 
was  a  certain  holiness  and  inspiration." 

To  judge  from  Tacitus  and  from  other  writers  of  the 
first  Christian  centuries,  there  was  little  system  in  the 


262  History  of  Religion  part  iv 

religion  of  Germany  in  those  days ;  the  gods  were  not 
organised  in  a  divine  family,  the  priests  were  not  a  caste 
like  the  Druids  of  France  and  Britain,  and  religious 
practice  was  loose  and  variable.  It  must  also  be 
remembered  that  what  foreign  writers  reported  on  the 
subject  was  connected  rather  with  national  and  official 
cults  than  with  popular  local  observances.  Of  the 
latter  there  was  an  abundant  growth  ;  a  distinguished 
foreign  writer  might  not  know  about  it,  but  the  evidence 
of  it  survives  in  various  forms  which  are  only  now  being 
seriously  studied.  To  know  the  practical  religion  of 
early  Germany  we  have  to  consult  the  village  festival 
and  legend  (as  has  been  done  by  Mannhardt  m  his 
Wald-  und  Feld-kulte  and  Mr.  Frazer  in  The  Golden 
Bough,  and  many  a  student  of  folklore),  which,  though 
now  apparently  meaningless,  were  once  the  serious 
religious  observance  and  doctrine  of  the  peasantry. 
The  peasant  carried  his  wishes  and  prayers  to  the 
familiar  wishing-well,  and  presented  offerings  to  the 
spirit  of  the  well  by  throwing  them  into  the  water 
or  hanging  them  on  the  surrounding  trees.  The  fairy 
rather  than  far-off  Wodan  was  looked  to  for  good 
fortune ;  the  rite  of  the  fabulous  village  hero,  with  its 
quaint  immemorial  usages,  roused  more  enthusiasm 
than  the  stately  public  ceremonial.  Another  side  of  the 
mind  of  early  Germany  is  to  be  gathered  from  the  heroic 
legends  and  the  fairy  tales,  many  of  the  elements  of  which, 
we  are  assured,  were  even  then  in  existence.  Were 
these  legends  formed  by  a  process  of  degradation  ;  did 
they  begin  with  telling  about  the  gods,  and  were  they 
afterwards  applied  to  heroes  and  princes  and  common 
men?  Or  was  the  process  in  the  opposite  direction 
from  this  ;  were  the  stories,  first  of  all,  those  of  human 
warriors,  their  wars  and  loves,  and  did  they  then  become 
mixed  up  with  solar  and  celestial  ideas  ?  Were  the 
fairy  tales  originally  stories  of  the  gods,  and  did  they 
by  popular  and  familiar  treatment  fall  below  the  dignity 
of  their  oiginal  themes  till  they  came  to  be  a  debased  and 


CHAP.  XV  The  Teutons  263 

broken-down  mythology?  or  were  they  at  first  stories 
about  beasts  and  about  clever  tricks,  such  as  savages 
love  to  tell,  and  did  they  rise  to  something  more 
dignified,  till  in  some  of  them  we  may  trace  the  stories 
of  the  gods  ?  It  is  not  necessary  that  we  should  answer 
these  questions,  which  carry  us  back  to  an  earlier  time 
than  that  with  which  we  are  concerned  ;  but  any  one 
who  knows  the  tales,  and  will  try  to  realise  the  state  of 
mind  of  those  who  received  them  not  as  fancy  but  as 
serious  fact,  will  know  something  of  the  religion  of 
early  Germany  ;  of  the  strange  beings,  fairies,  dwarfs, 
magicians,  talking  animals,  animated  sun  and  moon 
and  winds,  by  which  the  German  believed  himself  to 
be  surrounded. 

Later  German  Religfion. — In  Southern  Germany  the 
introduction  of  Christianity  early  put  an  end  to  any 
development  of  Teutonic  religion  which  might  have 
taken  place  there.  The  old  faith,  however,  still  main- 
tained itself  in  more  Northern  latitudes.  It  was  brought 
to  Britain  by  the  German  invaders,  continued  there 
till  the  seventh  century,  and  was  brought  in  again  in  a 
more  Northern  form  by  the  Norsemen,  who  in  their 
turn  "  gradually  deserted  Thor  and  Odin  for  the  white 
Christ."  ^  Bede  tells  hardly  anything  of  the  paganism 
which  had  been  the  religion  of  England  a  century 
before  he  wrote ;  in  this  he  is  like  other  Christian 
teachers  who  might  have  told  but  did  not.  But  though 
it  came  to  an  end  in  England,  Teutonic  religion  con- 
tinued to  prevail  in  the  countries  from  which  the 
invaders  had  come.  In  Frisia  in  the  eighth  century 
we  hear  of  a  goddess  Hulda,  a  kind  goddess,  as  her 
name  implies,  who  sends  increase  to  plants  and  is  a 
patroness  of  fishing.  A  god  called  Fosete,  or  Forsete 
(Forseti  in  modern  Icelandic  =  chairman),  identified  both 
with  Odin  and  with  Balder,  was  worshipped  in  Heligo- 
land ;  he  had  a  sacred  well  there,  from  which  water  had 
to  be  drawn  in  silence.     There  are  temples,  often  in  the 

'  VJmg^&y''?,  Hereward  the  Wake. 


264  History  of  Religion  part  iv 

middle  of  a  wood,  with  priestly  incumbents,  and  rich 
endowments,  both  of  lands  and  treasure ;  and  human 
sacrifice  in  various  forms  is  said  to  have  been  in  use. 
Idols  are  mentioned,  even  (at  Upsala  in  Sweden)  a 
trinity  of  idols ;  but  this  is  what  Church  writers  would 
naturally  impute  to  heathens,  and  the  statement  is 
discredited.  No  Teutonic  idol  has  survived ;  the  loss 
to  art  may  not  be  great,  but  such  a  relic  would  have 
settled  the  controversy. 

Iceland.  —  Teutonic  paganism  reached  its  highest 
development  in  Iceland.  Of  this  branch  of  it  alone  is 
there  a  literature,  for  many  of  the  sagas  are  the  fruit  of 
a  literary  movement  in  Iceland  anterior  to  the  establish- 
ment of  Christianity  ;  and  the  historian  Ari,  who  wrote 
within  a  century  after  that  event,  gives  careful  informa- 
tion of  the  earlier  state  of  affairs.  The  reader  of  Burnt 
Njal  sees  that  among  the  Icelanders  life  was  short 
and  precarious.  With  the  spirit  of  adventure,  which 
led  them  to  be  constantly  setting  out  on  warlike  and 
piratical  expeditions,  they  combined  a  strong  tendency 
to  local  quarrels,  which  filled  up  their  life  at  home  with 
a  constant  series  of  blood-feuds.  These  latter  are  gone 
about  in  a  methodical  and  business-like  way ;  custom 
sanctions  them,  the  meetings  of  the  popular  assembly 
do  not  seek  to  suppress  or  punish  them  if  only  they 
are  conducted  according  to  the  rules.  No  public 
authority  had  as  yet  arisen  to  carry  out  the  law  between 
one  household  and  another ;  the  avenger  has  his 
recognised  place  and  duty.  Society  is  patriarchal  as 
in  other  Aryan  communities ;  each  family  is  a  com- 
munity of  blood-kindred  for  mutual  defence  and  also 
for  worship.  The  leading  cult  of  Icelandic  religion 
was  the  domestic  worship  of  ancestors,  conducted  by 
the  head  of  the  household.  The  dead  were  buried  in 
knolls  or  burrows  near  the  dwelling,  and  their  spirits 
were  thought  to  inhabit  these  places ;  they  are  said  to 
"die  into  the  hill."  Altars  are  erected  and  sacrifices 
offered  there ;  the  blood  of  the  victim  poured  out  upon 


CHAP.  XV  The  Teutons  265 

the  ground  is  supposed  to  be  enjoyed  by  them.  These 
knolls  became  the  sacred  places  of  their  district,  and 
many  a  belief  existed  about  these  quiet  neighbours  and 
the  help  they  afforded  to  the  living.  "  Elves  "  they  were 
called,  and  they  were  thought  of  as  a  cleanly  and  kindly 
race.  The  spirits  of  bad  men,  on  the  contrary,  lived  an 
uneasy  life,  as  demons,  and  were  the  workers  of  mischief 
Along  with  this  belief  in  the  spirits  of  the  dead  as 
inhabiting  the  burial  hill  of  the  household,  there  is 
another  conception,  namely,  that  the  dead  go  to  a 
distant  region  of  the  unseen  world.  In  Homer  also 
these  two  conceptions  are  combined.  The  Icelandic 
burial  rites  are  founded  on  the  latter  view.  The 
"  departed  "  is  going  on  a  long  journey,  and  his  friends 
escort  him  as  far  as  they  can  ;  shoes  are  bound  on 
his  feet,  the  Hel-shoes,  for  Hel  is  the  name  of  the 
region  of  the  dead.  Gifts  are  given  to  him  ;  horses, 
male  and  female  attendants,  hawks  and  hounds,  are 
burned  with  him  on  the  pyre,  and  his  wife  voluntarily 
accompanies  him  ;  all  these  he  is  to  have  with  him 
in  the  country  beyond. 

In  addition  to  the  domestic  cult  we  have  that  of 
local  objects;  holy  wells,  waterfalls,  groves,  stones  are 
worshipped.  Mother  Earth  is  called  on,  so  is  Thunder, 
so  is  Heaven.  But  besides  these  minor  worships  there 
is  the  public  one,  connected  with  a  large  tribe  or  with 
a  king's  court.  A  temple  on  the  same  plan  as  a  large 
dwelling-house  forms  a  place  of  meeting  and  of  sacrifice, 
an  asylum,  and  a  place  of  oaths  and  covenants.  On 
a  table  in  front  of  the  high  seat  stands  the  bowl  which, 
filled  with  blood  and  along  with  certain  sticks,  forms 
a  m.eans  of  divination.  A  gold  ring  also  lies  there, 
which  a  man  puts  on  when  he  is  about  to  swear  an 
oath,  and  which  the  priest  puts  on  at  meetings. 

The  priest  has  the  duty  of  keeping  up  the  building 
and  property  of  the  temple  and  of  maintaining  the 
sacrifices.  At  the  latter  various  rites  are  done  with 
the  blood  of  victims,  and  those  present  feast  on   the 


266  History  of  Religion  part  iv 

flesh  and  drink  toasts.  The  first  cup  is  for  Wodan, 
various  other  gods  are  celebrated,  and  there  is  a  cup 
of  remembrance  for  the  departed.  Sacrifices  are  offered 
for  the  crops,  for  victory,  for  any  great  object  on  which 
the  community  is  bent.  In  this  ritual  there  is  no 
evidence  of  any  idols.  Though  the  Icelanders  are  not 
without  art,  the  great  gods  have  not  yet  perhaps 
assumed  to  their  minds  such  definite  figures  as  to  be 
thus  set  forth  :  no  Homer  has  placed  them  clear  before 
the  inward  eye.  The  rites  are  bloody,  the  altar  has 
ever  anew  to  be  made  to  shine  with  the  blood  of 
victims.  Human  sacrifices  are  only  resorted  to  in 
times  of  great  common  danger,  as  a  terrible  last  resort  ; 
the  god  to  whom  the  human  victim  is  devoted  is  moved 
by  the  bloodshed  to  avert  his  anger,  or  to  make  greater 
exertions  for  his  people.  Bloodshed  forms  the  strongest 
of  all  bonds.  To  link  themselves  together  in  an  indis- 
soluble brotherhood,  two  friends  mingle  their  blood  on 
the  ground  and  then  each  of  them  treads  on  it.  The 
shedding  of  human  blood  at  the  launching  of  a  ship 
or  at  the  laying  of  the  foundation  of  a  building  is 
also  known.  Savage  and  cruel  as  this  religion  is, 
there  are  signs  that  it  is  softening,  and  that  some  of 
its  darker  rites  are  beginning  to  admit  of  commutation. 
When  Christianity  approaches,  the  Icelanders  feel  that 
it  must  make  a  great  change,  and  that  some  of  the 
cruelties  which  they  regard  as  the  good  old  customs,  will 
have  to  be  laid  aside.  We  hear  of  the  stipulation 
being  made  that  if  they  receive  baptism  they  shall 
not  be  required  to  give  up  the  removal  of  unpromising 
children  nor  the  eating  of  horseflesh. 

The  Eddas,  in  which  Scandinavian  mythology  reaches 
its  ultimate  form,  seem  to  belong  to  a  higher  plane  of 
human  life  than  the  religion  we  have  described,  and 
it  has  appeared  to  many  scholars  of  late  years  that 
they  cannot  be  regarded  as  a  pure  product  of  paganism, 
but  are  in  great  part  influenced  by  Christianity  both 
in  matter  and  in  sentiment.     The  older  Edda,  written 


CHAP.  XV  The  Teutons  267 

in  verse,  is  said  to  have  been  collected  by  Saemund 
Sigfusson  the  learned,  one  of  the  early  Christian  priests 
of  Iceland,  who  lived  about  the  eleventh  century.  The 
other  Edda  is  in  prose ;  it  is  a  collection  made  about 
two  centuries  later.  The  form  given  to  the  myths  in 
these  collections  is  due  to  the  Skalds,  who  flourished 
in  Iceland  in  the  early  Middle  Ages ;  but  the  legends 
themselves  are  older.  Nothing  is  known  precisely 
about  their  origin  or  early  diffusion. 

The  Eddas  may  be  compared  in  many  respects 
with  the  Homeric  poems.  As  in  the  latter,  the  gods 
form  a  family,  the  members  of  which  come  together 
to  a  certain  place  for  meetings,  while  individually  they 
have  their  own  adventures,  their  loves,  their  jealousies, 
their  jokes,  their  tricks.  In  the  Eddas  too  we  find 
that  the  gods  are  not,  strictly  speaking,  eternal ;  they 
succeeded  an  older  race  of  gods,  and  their  turn  too 
may  come  to  pass  away.  They  are  called  yEsir,  which 
is  the  plural  of  As,  The  etymology  of  this  is  un- 
certain ;  compare  the  Sanscrit  Asura,  said  to  mean 
the  living  or  breathing  one.  The  .^sir  are  spoken  of 
in  later  times,  not  in  the  Eddas,  as  if  they  had  been 
a  race  of  warriors ;  they  are  said  to  have  come  in  to 
Scandinavia  and  got  the  better  of  those  who  lived 
there  before,  because  they  worshipped  a  superior  set 
of  gods.^  An  historic  reminiscence  may  lurk  here. 
Before  the  yEsir  there  were  giants,  and  the  earth  with 
all  its  parts  is  made  of  the  body  of  one  of  these 
giants,2  whom  the  new  race  superseded  as  governors 
of  the  world.  But  the  giants  are  still  there  and  their 
spirit  is  unchanged  ;  there  is  a  danger  of  their  interfer- 
ing to  subvert  the  rule  of  their  successors. 

There  are  other  cosmogonic  myths  besides  that  of 
the  division  of  the  giant  Ymir.  One  is  on  this  wise. 
Ere  this  world  began,  there  was  on  one  side  Niflheim, 
the  land  of  mist  and  cold,  on  the  other  side  Muspelheim, 

■•  See  a  similar  statement  about  the  Incas,  p.  87. 
*  Compare  "Purusha"  in  the  Rigveda, 


2  68  History  of  Religion  part  iv 

the  region  of  fire ;  between  these  two  lay  Ginnunga- 
gap,  the  north  side  of  it  frozen,  the  south  side  glowing 
hot,  and  life  originated  by  the  meeting,  in  one  way 
or  another,  of  the  heat  and  cold.  There  are  very 
primitive  myths  of  the  shaping  of  man  out  of  two 
pieces  of  wood,  of  Night  and  Day  as  drivers  of  chariots 
and  horses,  of  the  sun  and  moon  fleeing  from  wolves, 
and  so  on.  A  more  poetic  conception  is  the  division 
of  the  world  into  Asgard,  the  garden  of  the  ^sir; 
Midgard,  the  world  of  man  ;  and  Utgard,  the  world 
outside.  In  the  first  Odin  has  his  seat  Hlidskjalf; 
when  he  sits  in  it  he  can  see  and  understand  what- 
ever is  happening  in  any  part  of  the  broad  world  (is 
he  the  sun,  then?).  The  third  region  is  generally 
called  Jotunheim,  the  home  of  the  giants,  an  icy  region 
at  the  extreme  part  of  the  habitable  world.  A  bridge 
exists  from  the  dwelling  of  men  to  that  of  the  gods ; 
it  is  called  Bifrost,  and  is  the  rainbow. 

The  gods  have  various  places  of  meeting;  but  their 
principal  seat  is  under  a  great  tree,  the  ash.  Yggdrasil  ^ 
is  a  tree  worthy  of  the  gods  ;  it  is  a  world-tree ;  its 
roots  extend  to  all  the  worlds;  its  branches  spread 
even  over  heaven.  Under  it  is  the  fountain  Mimir, 
spring  of  wisdom,  from  which  Odin  drinks  daily. 
Near  it  is  the  dwelling  of  the  Norns,  fates  or  weird 
sisters,  who  establish  laws  and  uphold  them  by  their 
judgments,  and  allot  to  every  man  his  span  of  life. 
They  are  named  Urd  the  past,  Verdandi  the  present, 
and  Skuld  the  future.  Daily  do  they  water  the  ash 
from  the  spring  to  keep  its  leaves  fresh,  and  help  it 
to  contend  with  its  numerous  foes,  for  a  great  serpent 
is  continually  gnawing  at  its  root,  and  it  has  also  other 
troubles.  This  myth  of  Yggdrasil  is  the  apotheosis  of 
Teutonic  tree-worship,  and  is  richly  suggestive.^ 

The  Gods  of  the  Eddas.— We  now  come  to  the  gods 

^  Yggdrasill  =  Odin's  horse  =  the  gallows.     Is  it  the  cross  ? 
2  Carlyle  in  his  Heroes,  p.    1 8,  draws  out  the  spiritual  significance  of 
it  and  of  Norse  mythology  generally. 


CHAP.  XV  The  Teutons  269 

of  the  system.  Odin  is  in  the  Eddas  the  founder  of  the 
world  as  now  constituted.  He  has  displaced  the  old 
formless  race  of  gods,  and  is  the  leader  of  a  new  and 
vigorous  race  now  ruling  in  their  stead.  The  old 
scholars  rationalised  Odin  into  a  chief  who  had  led  a 
migration  from  Asia  to  Norway  in  early  times.  He  is 
the  inventor  of  the  art  of  writing  by  runes  and  the 
founder  of  poetry  ;  thus  he  has  the  aspect  of  a  culture- 
hero  ;  that  is  to  say,  of  a  man  of  advanced  views  who, 
for  the  benefits  he  conferred  on  his  people,  was  exalted 
first  to  a  hero  and  then  to  a  god.  But  the  worship  of 
Odin  or  Wodan  is  one  of  the  earliest  things  we  know 
about  the  German  race.  He  is  the  god  of  the  South- 
Germans  from  the  very  first.  His  earliest  character  is 
that  of  a  storm-god.  Whether  his  name  is  connected 
with  the  German  wiithen,  rage  (Scot,  xvud')  or  with  the 
Vedic  Vata,  who  is  a  god  of  storm,  he  is  from  the  first 
an  impetuous  being.  The  early  myth  of  him  is  scarcely 
dead  at  this  day  ;  the  peasant  hears  him  rushing  through 
the  woods  at  night.  That  is  the  "  wild  hunt  of  Wodan," 
he  says  ;  the  god  is  out  with  his  followers,  and  woe  to 
him  who  gets  in  his  way !  The  early  Germans  thought 
of  him  as  a  kind  being  who  fulfilled  the  wishes  of  men, 
and  it  was  probably  this  side  of  his  character  that 
caused  him  to  be  identified  with  Mercury.  In  the 
Eddie  theology  he  is  a  patron  of  war,  as  becomes  the 
chief  god  of  a  warlike  people.  He  arranges  battle  and 
dispenses  victory ;  the  heroes  who  fall  in  battle  he 
receives  into  his  heavenly  army  ;  they  live  with  him  in 
Valhalla  or  Valholl,  the  hall  of  choice.  Odin  chooses 
those  who  are  to  go  there ;  he  is  assisted  in  this  by  the 
Valkyries  or  choice  -  maidens.  Life  in  Valhalla  is  a 
constant  round  of  fighting,  the  wounds  of  which  are 
healed  at  once,  and  feasting,  the  materials  for  which 
are  ever  renewed.  Odin,  like  other  great  gods,  bears 
traces  of  low  surroundings,  as  if  he  had  once  lived 
among  savages.  He  can  turn  himself  into  an  eagle  or 
other  animal  to  gain  his  object,  and  he  has  engaged  in 


270  History  of  Religion  part  iv 

disreputable  adventures.  But  he  tends  to  improve,  and 
the  Eddas  show  him  at  his  best  HLere  he  is  called  the 
All-father,  the  Ruler  of  all,  who  gave  man  a  soul  that 
shall  never  perish  ;  and  we  hear  that  he  needs  no  food 
and  takes  no  share  himself  in  the  feasts  of  the  heroes. 
All  the  righteous  shall  be  with  him  in  Vingolf  (the 
same  as  Valhalla),  but  the  wicked  shall  go  to  Hel,  the 
kingdom  of  Hel  or  Hela,  the  goddess  of  the  under- 
world. 

Thor  or  Donar,  Thunder,  is  said  to  be  the  mightiest 
of  the  gods;  he  is  identified,  as  we  saw,  with  Jove,  but 
he  is  a  rougher  and  more  primitive  deity.  He  drives  in 
a  chariot  drawn  by  two  goats,  and  is  possessed  of  three 
things  which  have  wonderful  properties.  The  first  is 
the  hammer  Mjolnir,  which  the  Frost-  and  Mountain- 
giants  cannot  resist  when  he  throws  it ;  the  second  is 
the  belt  of  strength,  which  makes  him  twice  as  strong 
when  he  puts  it  on  ;  and  the  third  a  pair  of  gauntlets 
with  which  he  grasps  his  mallet.  Many  stories  are  told 
of  his  prowess,  of  his  conflicts  with  the  giants,  who, 
however,  give  him  a  good  deal  of  trouble  with  their 
cunning ;  apd  of  his  catching  the  Midgard  serpent 
which  surrounds  the  world  at  the  bottom  of  the  sea. 
Being  a  god  of  storm,  he  forms  a  connection  with 
agriculture,  and  thus  gains  a  more  sedate  aspect  ;  he 
has  also  to  do  with  marriage,  and  a  hammer  is  used 
symbolically  at  Icelandic  weddings.  Thor  is  only  half- 
brother  to  the  other  sons  of  Odin;  his  mother  was 
Fiorgyn,  the  earth  ;  the  worships  of  Odin  and  Thor, 
originally  distinct,  seem  to  have  been  united  at  an  early 
period. 

The  god  Tyr,  son  of  Odin  by  a  giantess,  is  the 
Eddie  figure  of  the  German  Tiw  or  Ziu,  etymologically 
equivalent  to  Zeus  or  Jupiter,  but  identified  by  the 
Romans  with  Mars.  His  greatness  belongs  to  early 
times  ;  he  was  then  a  sword-god,  and  had  an  extensive 
worship  in  various  parts  of  Europe.  In  the  Eddas  he 
has  scarcely  any  character,  and  seldom  takes  a  prominent 


CHAP.  XV  The  Teutons  271 

part  in  the  legend.  Loki,  by  etymology  a  fire-god 
(Germ.  Lohe,  Scot.  Lowe)}  is  in  one  account  the  brother 
of  Odin,  in  another  his  son  by  a  giantess.  His  character 
is  fitful ;  sometimes  he  acts  a  brotherly  part  by  the  gods 
and  helps  them  out  of  their  difficulties  by  clever  devices, 
and  sometimes  he  provides  entertainment  for  them  ;  but 
for  the  most  part  he  is  an  embodiment  of  cunning  and 
mischief;  his  course  is  downwards,  he  tends  to  become 
a  being  purely  evil,  setting  himself  heartlessly  against 
the  wishes  of  the  other  gods,  and  acting  so  as  to  imperil 
them  and  their  world  till  they  are  obliged  to  cast  him 
out  of  heaven.  He  is  thus  a  kind  of  Lucifer  or  Satan, 
and  like  the  Christian  devil,  his  ultimate  fate  is  to  be 
bound  till  the  end  of  the  world  shall  arrive.  Baldup, 
the  son  of  Odin  and  Frigga,  is  the  best  and  brightest 
of  the  gods.  Like  Apollo,  he  has  to  do  with  light,  and 
no  pollution  can  come  near  him  ;  he  has  also  to  do  with 
the  administration  of  justice,  and  pronounces  sentences 
which  can  never  be  reversed.  Heimdall  also  is  a  light 
and  gracious  god ;  he  is  the  warder  of  the  ^Esir,  and 
stays  near  the  bridge  Bifrost.  Of  him  it  is  told  that  he 
wants  less  sleep  than  a  bird,  sees  a  hundred  miles  off  by 
night  or  day,  and  hears  the  grass  grow  on  the  ground 
and  the  wool  on  the  sheep's  back.  Brag"!  is  the  god  of 
poetry  and  eloquence,  the  best  of  all  skalds. 

Of  the  goddesses,  Friggfa,  wife  of  Odin,  stands  first, 
an  august  matron  of  mysterious  knowledge,  whom  even 
gods  consult,  and  by  whom  men  swear;  she  has  also, 
to  do  with  marriage,  and  the  childless  appeal  to  her. 
Etymologically  she  is  scarcely  to  be  distinguished  from 
Freya,  wife  of  Odur,  who,  however,  is  lighter  in  character, 
and  is  rather  a  goddess  of  love.  The  goddesses  in  the 
Eddas  are  more  shadowy  figures  than  the  gods  ;  there 
are  others,  and  an  attempt  is  made  to  reckon  up  twelve 
of  them  to  answer  to  the  twelve  chief  gods,  but  their 


^  The  etymology  is   not  perhaps   correct,  but  it   suggested  itself  and 
influenced  the  view  taken  of  this  god,  in  very  early  times. 


272  History  of  Religion  part  iv 

names  are  taken  from  the  qualities  they  represent,  and 
they  have  Httle  reality. 

The  story  of  the  death  of  Baldup,  brought  about  by 
the  evil  mind  of  Loki  in  defiance  of  the  whole  divine 
family,  sounds  the  note  of  tragedy  in  the  divine  family 
of  the  Eddas.  The  gods  themselves  suffer,  and  are 
unable  to  retrieve  the  misfortune  which  has  come  upon 
them.  With  one  accord  they  try  to  get  Baldur  brought 
back  from  the  under-world,  but  they  are  foiled  by  the 
same  agency  of  evil  which  carried  him  off.  With  the 
death  of  Baldur  the  gods  feel  that  their  rule,  which,  we 
saw,  had  a  beginning,  and  with  it  the  world  they  govern, 
for  the  two  are  inseparably  bound  up  with  each  other, 
is  coming  to  an  end.  The  gods  perish  in  the  ruin  of 
the  world  ;  and  this  is  well,  for  sin  cleaves  to  them 
and  to  their  house,  and  they  are  not  fit  to  endure. 
Ragfnarok,  the  twilight  of  the  gods,  comes  on  ;  the 
universe  is  burnt  up  in  a  mighty  conflagration,  and 
while  there  are  abodes  of  bliss  and  abodes  of  misery 
where  some  survive,  the  universe  as  a  whole  is  entirely 
changed,  and  a  milder  race  of  gods  will  rule  over  a 
better  world. 

If  this  mythology  were  found  to  be  of  native  Scandi- 
navian growth,  it  would  prove  that  Teutonic  religion 
was  capable  of  lofty  development,  and  would  throw 
back  an  interesting  light  upon  its  previous  history. 
Here,  it  has  been  maintained,  we  see  the  Teutonic  faith 
rising  to  monotheism.  Odin  has  among  his  other  titles 
that  of  All-father ;  he  is  rising  above  the  other  gods 
to  a  position  of  supremacy,  which  will  fit  him,  if  the 
process  were  allowed,  as  it  was  not,  to  advance  some- 
what further,  to  represent  pure  deity  and  to  attract  to 
himself  an  undivided  reverence.  Here  also  we  find  a 
religion  which  was  formerly  a  rude  intercourse  between 
barbarous  men  and  savage  gods,  clothing  itself  with  an 
ideal  element.  As  the  Greeks  found  religion  in  beauty 
~^  and  the  Romans  in  utility,  so  did  the  Germans  find  it 
at  last  in   pathos.     They  attain    to  the  conception  of 


CHAP.  XV  The  Te7itons  273 

suffering  deity ;  in  Baldur  a  god  falls  victim  to  malice 
and  wickedness,  and  the  sorrow  of  his  fall  takes  pos- 
session of  the  whole  of  heaven.  Thus  pain  and  sacrifice 
are  hallowed,  for  man  by  the  history  of  the  gods,  and 
his  intercourse  with  them  leads  him  into  heights  and 
depths  unknown  before. 

But  the  conviction  is  now  establishing  itself  that  this 
phase  of  Teutonic  religion  is  borrowed  from  Christianity, 
which  was  then  seriously  menacing  the  existence  of  the 
old  faith,  and  that  it  is  the  shadow  of  their  approaching 
extinction  by  the  new  religion,  which  occasions  among 
the  Northern  gods  this  feeling  of  sadness.  They  feel 
themselves  falling  from  their  position  ;  they  are  to  be 
gods  no  longer,  but  are  to  yield  to  the  world-order, 
based  on  a  deeper  law  than  theirs,  which  called  them 
into  being  and  now  is  preparing  their  dismissal.  Dis- 
tinctly Christian  ideas  enter  the  old  world  of  gods ; 
the  ideas  of  sin,  of  sacrifice,  of  a  final  judgment,  of  a 
good  god  who  dies,  of  an  evil  spirit  who,  after  prevailing 
for  a  time,  is  chained  up  to  await  his  doom.  That  a 
sense  of  guilt  rests  on  the  gods  shows  that  they  are 
abandoning  their  rule,  and  they  acknowledge  that  their 
successors  will  be  better  than  they  have  been. 

Books  Recommended 

Grimm's  German  Mythology,  translated  by  Stallybrass,  4  vols. 

,,         Fairy  Tales.     Mr.  Lang  writes  an  Introduction  to  the   English 
translation  in  Bell's  edition. 
Mannhardt,    Germanische    Mythen,    1858,    and     Wald-  und   Feld-kulte, 

1875,  77. 

For  the  later  Northern  section,  Vigfusson  and  Powell's  Corpus  Poeticum 
Boreale,  especially  the  Excursus  on  Religion,  i.  401. 

Dasent,  Burnt  Njal ;  or  Life  in  Iceland  at  the  end  of  the  tenth  century. 

Mallet's  Northern  Antiquities. 

Thorpe,  Northern  Mythology. 

De  la  Saussaye,  The  Religion  of  the  Teutons,  1902,  the  most  compre- 
hensive statement  of  the  whole  subject. 

Ralston,  Songs  of  Russian  People,  and  Russian  Folk  Tales. 

Simrock,  Handb.  der  deutschen  Mythologie. 

R.  M.  Meyer,  Altgermanische  Religionsgeschichie,  19 ID. 

Sir  John  Rhys,  Oxford  Proceedings,  p.  201,  sqq. 


CHAPTER   XVI 

GREECE 

The  history  of  Europe  begins  in  Greece.  It  is  there 
that  the  Aryans  in  Europe  first  feel  the  touch  of  the 
arts  and  civilisation  of  the  East,  and  are  stirred  up  to 
new  activities ;  and  the  life  thus  quickened  in  Greece 
transmitted  its  spark  to  Italy,  and  so  to  the  whole  of 
Europe. 

People  and  Land. — There  is  no  direct  evidence  that 
the  Greeks  came  to  their  country  from  elsewhere ;  and 
the  theory  of  a  Graeco-Italic  period,  in  which  the  future 
inhabitants  of  Greece  and  Italy  lived  together  some- 
where to  the  north  of  both  these  countries  and  made 
common  advances  in  civilisation,  is  now  abandoned. 
There  are,  however,  faint  indications  that  the  Greeks 
spread  over  their  country  from  the  north  southwards. 
What  people  dwelt  in  it  before  them  it  is  impossible 
to  say ;  the  Pelasgi  and  Leleges,  whom  they  themiselves 
conceived  to  have  preceded  them,  left  behind  them  no 
other  trace  than  that  belief.  When  first  we  descry 
this  land  in  the  faint  dawn  of  history,  it  is  tenanted  by 
the  people  whose  name  it  bears,  touched  only  by  the 
Thracians  to  the  north,  and  the  Illyrians  to  the  west, 
these  also  being  Aryan  races.  Though  the  Greeks  are 
on  both  sides  of  the  Egean,  which  seems  from  the 
earliest  times  to  have  connected  rather  than  divided 
them,  their  centre  of  gravity  is  in  the  mainland  of 
Hellas,  including  the  Peloponnesus.  In  this  country 
many  a  migration  no  doubt  took  place  before  the  people 

274 


CHAP.  XVI  Greece  275 

was  finally  arranged  in  it ;  and  some  of  these  migrations 
are  faintly  known  to  history.  When  once  the  settle- 
ment had  been  accomplished,  the  nature  of  the  country 
did  much  to  fix  the  institutions  of  the  people  and  the 
mutual  relations  of  their  various  communities.  Large 
tribes  coming  into  the  narrow  valleys  and  sequestered 
coasts  of  Greece  necessarily  broke  up  into  small  cantons, 
each  of  which,  though  not  cut  off  from  intercourse  with 
its  neighbours,  was  free  to  develop  by  itself  The 
country  is  said  by  travellers  to  be  the  most  beautiful  in 
the  world.  The  branch  of  the  Aryans  which  settled  in 
it  may  have  brought  scanty  acquirements  with  them, 
but  they  brought  great  capacities.  The  Greeks  had  an 
unrivalled  talent  for  doing  what  they  saw  others  do,  in 
a  much  better  way,  and  so  making  it  their  own.  They 
had  an  inborn  disposition  to  what  is  reasonable.  That 
they  had  a  deep-seated  inclination  to  what  is  harmonious 
and  beautiful  is  proved  by  their  first  great  work  of  art, 
their  language.  Of  that  language  there  were  several 
dialects  in  the  earliest  times ;  the  principal  ones  being 
the  broad  Doric  of  the  peninsula  and  the  colonies,  and 
the  softer  Ionic  of  which  the  classical  language  is  a 
branch.  But  the  Greeks  of  all  dialects  could  under- 
stand each  other,  and  regarded  as  barbarians  those 
without  who  spoke  other  tongues.  Thus  from  the  first 
this  people  was  much  divided,  but  was  also  held  together 
by  strong  bonds. 

Earliest  Religrion — Functional  Deities. — The  religion 
the  Greeks  brought  with  them  to  their  country  was 
undoubtedly  that  which  we  have  discussed  in  our 
chapter  on  the  Aryans.  The  primitive  elements  of 
Aryan  religion  all  reappear  in  Greece  ;  the  combination 
of  many  small  household  worships  with  the  supra-family 
worship  of  a  great  god  or  gods,  the  few  great  gods  who 
are  surrounded  by  a  multitude  of  spirits,  some  of  these 
also  growing  into  gods,  the  recognition  of  spiritual 
presences  in  many  a  natural  object,  living  or  dead. 
All  this  we  find    in  early  Greece.     The  whole  nation 


276  History  of  Religion  part  iv 

believes  in  Zeus ;  to  all  he  is  the  Lord  of  heaven,  the 
giver  of  rain,  the  fertiliser  of  mother  earth,  the  supreme 
ruler  in  earth  as  well  as  in  heaven,  the  father  of  the 
gods  as  well  as  of  men.  This  is  the  first  bond  of  unity 
in  Greek  religion.  But  every  family,  every  village, 
every  town  has  its  own  peculiar  worship  which  is  to  be 
found  nowhere  else.  That  worship  may  be  addressed 
to  Zeus  with  a  local  title;  each  circle  of  men  has  its 
own  particular  Zeus,  who  is  their  protector  and  ruler ; 
and  thus  Zeus  has  many  forms  and  names.  In  each 
community  there  is  also  the  worship  of  the  goddess  of 
the  hearth  (Hestia) ;  each  household  has  its  own  Hestia, 
and  carries  on  the  worship  which  in  other  Aryan  peoples 
is  connected  with  the  memory  of  departed  ancestors. 
But  the  family  or  the  township  has  also  other  objects 
of  worship.  There  are  other  gods  besides  Zeus  who  are 
connected  with  heaven,  such  as  Apollo  and  Heracles. 
There  are  gods  connected  with  each  activity  of  the 
people.  Artemis  is  goddess  of  hunting,  Aphrodite  of 
the  peaceful  life  of  nature  and  of  gardens,  and  also  of 
love.  Poseidon,  the  sea-god,  was  also  worshipped  in- 
land, and  was  perhaps  originally  a  god  of  horses  and 
oxen  ;  HephzEstus  was  the  god  of  workers  in  metal. 
Ares  the  god  of  battle.  These  are  in  their  origin  what 
are  called  functional  deities,  that  is  to  say,  gods  who  are 
present  in  the  function  with  which  they  are  associated, 
and  of  which  they  constitute  the  ideal  or  sacred  side, 
and  who  have  no  existence  apart  from  it. 

The  gods  of  Greece  in  fact  had  their  origin  in  that 
view  of  nature  as  animated  in  every  part,  which  the 
Greeks  shared  with  other  branches  of  the  Aryans,  and 
with  early  man  generally.  Like  the  Latins,  the  Greeks 
at  first  saw  a  mystery,  a  spirit,  in  every  part  of  life ; 
each  fountain  had  its  nymph,  each  forest  glade  its 
dryad ;  and  they  felt  the  gods  to  be  returning  to  fresh 
life  when  spring  came  with  its  flowers.  Each  of  their 
own  activities  also  had  its  unseen  genius.  Each  en- 
closure for  flocks  had  its  Apollo,  "him  of  the  sheepfold," 


CHAP.  XVI  Greece  277 

who  protected  the  flock  and  the  shepherd ;  and  each 
boundary  stone  its  Hermes,  "  him  of  the  boundary,"  who 
also  watched  over  flocks  and  took  charge  of  marches 
and  of  paths. 

Growth  of  Greek  Gods. — Such  beings,  however,  are 
something  less  than  gods  ;  and  the  Greeks,  long  before 
we  know  them,  had  made  the  step  which  the  Romans 
scarcely  made  at  all,  from  the  spirit  to  the  god,  from 
the  vague  unseen  power  behind  an  object  or  an  act,  to 
the  free  being  conceived  with  human  attributes  and  feel- 
ings, who  can  be  the  patron  of  a  community,  and  afford 
help  in  all  its  concerns.  Not  all  the  spirits  rise  into 
gods ;  it  depends  on  circumstances  which  of  them  are 
selected  for  that  advance  ;  but  the  choice  once  made, 
their  rise  was  rapid.  As  the  gods  grew  into  personality 
and  definite  character,  though  the  function  out  of  which 
they  first  sprang  was  not  forgotten,  other  functions  were 
added  to  them ;  and  as  a  god  grew  in  power  and  con- 
sideration, his  worship  was  set  up  in  new  places,  where 
other  titles  and  attributes  awaited  him.  The  local  god 
might  be  identified  with  the  great  god  from  a  distance. 
The  god  of  a  powerful  community,  as  Athene  ("she  of 
Athens  "),  might  be  adopted  wherever  the  influence  of 
that  community  extended ;  thus  new  gods  arose  and 
old  ones  took  local  form.  When  a  change  took  place 
in  the  habits  of  the  people,  it  was  followed  by  a  corre- 
sponding change  in  the  character  of  their  gods.  When 
agriculture  comes  in,  the  gods  have  to  take  notice  of 
it,  the  pastoral  god  turns  agricultural,  and  even  the 
huntress  Artemis  becomes  an  encourager  of  fertility. 
When  navigation  rises  in  importance,  a  number  of  the 
gods,  Poseidon  at  their  head,  become  sea-gods. 

Stones,  Animals,  Trees. — In  Greece  the  worship  of 
the  gods  soon  superseded  that  of  objects  not  possessing 
any  human  character.  Traces  of  such  lower  worships 
survive,  it  is  true,  in  the  later  religion  in  great  abundance, 
but  they  have  no  influence  in  its  development;  they  only 
tell  their  story  of  the  otherwise  forgotten  past.     Stones 


278  History  of  Religion  part  iv 

were  worshipped  in  early  Greece.  Not  to  speak  of  the 
cromlechs  and  dolmens,  which  are  found  there  as  in  all 
parts  of  Asia  and  Europe,  and  the  meaning  of  which  is 
so  little  understood,  stones  were  preserved  as  sacred 
objects  in  various  places,  even  to  late  times,  and  had  no 
doubt  originally  been  worshipped.  The  god  Hermes 
was  represented  in  every  period  by  a  slab  of  stone  set 
upright,  a  human  head  and  other  human  features  being 
indicated  on  it.  Even  in  later  Greece,  boards  or  blocks 
of  wood  were  in  some  places  exhibited  on  rare  occasions, 
which  were  the  oldest  images  of  the  Artemis  or  the 
Aphrodite  there  adored.  Though  for  the  public  eye 
splendid  statues  had  taken  the  place  of  the  goddess, 
the  original  image  was  still  thought  to  have  a  sanctity 
all  its  own.  We  also  notice  that  the  gods  of  Greece 
are  associated  with  animals.  Zeus  is  a  bull  in  Crete ; 
he  has  also  other  transformations :  Pan  is  a  goat ; 
Artemis  is  a  bear  in  some  provinces,  elsewhere  a  doe. 
The  Athene  of  the  Acropolis  is  a  serpent.  Apollo  is 
sometimes  connected  with  the  mouse.  Along  with 
these  identifications  of  the  gods  with  animals  we  may 
mention  the  animal  emblems  with  which  they  are 
generally  represented.  The  eagle  is  the  bird  of  Zeus, 
the  owl  of  Athene,  the  peacock  of  Hera,  the  dove  of 
Aphrodite.  In  this  connection  we  cannot  help  think- 
ing of  the  sacred  animals  of  the  Egyptian  nomes ;  and 
the  question  may  be  asked  whether  such  animals  must 
be  taken  to  be  in  Greece  also  the  signs  of  a  primitive 
totemism  ? 

Of  the  tree-worship  of  Greece  much  has  been  written 
of  late.  The  oak  was  the  sacred  tree  of  Zeus  ;  he  must 
have  been  conceived  as  living  in  it ;  he  gave  oracles  at 
Dodona  by  the  rustling  of  the  branches  of  the  tree. 
Athene  has  the  olive,  Apollo  the  palm,  and  also  the 
laurel.  After  the  introduction  of  agriculture  rustic 
cults  arose,  in  which  the  inhabitants  of  a  village  followed 
in  sympathetic  rites  the  fortunes  of  the  gods  who  live 
in  the  life  of  the  plants  in  summer  and  die  with  them 


CHAP.    XVI 


Greece  279 


in  autumn.  The  god  of  the  Semites  is  generally  a 
changeless  being,  who  himself  conducts  and  orders  the 
changes  of  the  seasons,  but  in  Greece  we  find  gods 
whom  man  can  accompany  in  the  tragedy  of  their  fall 
and  the  triumph  of  their  rise.  We  shall  see  afterwards 
that  the  rustic  worships  of  Demeter  and  Proserpine  were 
brought  forward  at  a  critical  period  in  Greek  religion, 
to  supply  an  element  which  was  much  required  in  it. 
These  worships,  similar,  as  Mr.  Frazer  suggests,^  to  those 
still  kept  up  by  our  own  peasantry,  were  doubtless  of 
immemorial  antiquity  in  Greece,  though  in  the  earlier 
period  they  are  little  heard  of. 

Thus  the  Greek  gods  grew  up  in  the  period  before 
Greece  was  awakened  to  new  thoughts  by  contact  with 
foreign  peoples.  Many  harsh  and  cruel  rites  were  no 
doubt  practised  ;  human  sacrifice,  heard  of  even  in  later 
times  in  remote  parts  of  the  country,  was  not  unknown, 
and  practices  were  connected  with  the  service  of  stern 
gods  and  goddesses  which,  though  literature  is  silent 
about  them,  left  their  mark  on  custom.  Zeus  and  one 
or  two  other  gods  are  essentially  moral,  and  some  duties 
were  strongly  encouraged  by  religion,  such  as  those  of 
hospitality  and  strict  regard  for  boundaries,  of  faithful- 
ness to  pledge,  of  respect  for  strangers.  But  many  of 
the  gods  are  too  closely  interwoven  with  external  nature 
to  be  very  decidedly  moral  powers;  they  are  like  the 
plants  and  animals,  neither  good  nor  bad  but  natural. 

Greek  Religion  is  Local. — What  strikes  us  most 
strongly  about  this  early  Greek  religion  is  its  entire 
want  of  system  and  its  local  and  disintegrated  character. 
Every  town,  every  family,  has  its  own  religion.  There 
is  no  central  authority.  New  gods  are  constantly 
springing  up ;  the  old  ones  are  constantly  receiving 
new  titles  and  forming  new  unions  with  each  other  or 
with  newer  gods.  The  god  of  one  place  is  in  another 
only  a  hero ;  the  same  god  is  represented  in  different 
places  in  entirely  different  ways,  and  entirely  different 

1  Golden  Bough,  vol.  i.  p.  356. 


28o  History  of  Religion  part  iv 

legends  are  attached  to  his  name.  Thus  the  Greeks 
have  from  the  first  a  mythology  singularly  extensive 
and  inconsistent,  and  their  worship  also  varies  in  each 
place.  There  is  no  general  religion,  but  only  a  multitude 
of  local  ones.  In  story  and  in  rite  old  and  new  are 
mixed  up  together, — what  is  local  and  what  is  imported, 
what  is  savage  in  its  nature  and  origin,  and  what  is  on 
the  side  of  progress.  This  is  a  state  of  matters  which 
lies  in  every  land  before  the  beginning  of  organised 
religion.  Rites  and  legends  are  everywhere  of  local 
growth,  and  the  attempt  to  frame  the  various  rites  and 
legends  into  a  consistent  ritual  and  a  systematic  account 
of  the  gods,  comes  later.  In  Greece,  as  Mr.  Robertson 
Smith  observes,  the  earlier  state  of  matters  continued 
longer  and  influenced  the  national  faith  more  deeply 
than  elsewhere.  As  the  Greeks  never  succeeded  in 
forming  a  central  political  system,  so  they  never  attained 
to  unity  in  worship.  No  national  temple  arose,  the 
priesthood  of  which  had  power  to  frame  the  national 
religion,  to  lay  down  rules  for  sacrifice,  or  to  edit  sacred 
texts.  The  Greeks  were  less  than  any  other  people 
under  the  sway  of  religious  authority.  While  local 
practice  was  fixed,  and  custom  and  tradition  declared 
plainly  enough  what  was  to  be  regarded  as  religious 
duty,  belief  was  quite  free  to  grow  as  circumstances 
or  the  growth  of  culture  dictated.  A  religion  in  such 
a  position,  and  among  a  people  of  lively  imagination 
and  specially  gifted  in  the  direction  of  art,  must 
necessarily  receive  its  forms  rather  from  the  artist  than 
the  priest. 

Artistic  Tendency. — Thus  we  can  discern  from  the 
first  the  direction  which  Greek  religion  must  take.  The 
Greeks  shaped  their  gods  earlier  and  more  freely  than 
other  peoples,  and  went  on  shaping  them  till  no  further 
advance  could  be  made  in  that  way.  Long  before 
Homer  they  had  been  making  their  gods  such  as  free 
men,  and  men  endowed  with  a  sense  of  beauty,  could 
worship.     They   were   not   content   to  worship   lifeless 


CHAP.   XVI 


Greece  281 


objects,  but  must  have  living  beings.  They  were  not 
content  to  worship  beings  without  reason,  they  must 
worship  reasonable  beings.  They  were  not  inclined  to 
regard  the  natural  objects  they  worshipped  with  terror 
or  self-prostration,  but  rather  in  a  spirit  of  genial 
friendliness  and  sympathy  as  being  something  like 
themselves.  And  so  they  turned  their  gods  into  men. 
The  anthropomorphising  tendency,  present  as  we  have 
seen  in  other  lands  and  at  much  earlier  periods,  present 
indeed  wherever  religion  is  a  growing  power,  had  freer 
play  with  them  than  with  any  other  people.  Thus  the 
spirits  of  the  fountain  and  the  tree,  and  of  every  part 
of  nature  that  was  worshipped,  took  human  form.  At 
first,  no  doubt,  the  nymph  was  in  the  fountain,  the 
dryad  in  the  oak,  but  as  time  went  on  the  human  maiden 
cast  off  her  mosses  and  her  bark  and  leaves,  and  stood 
forth  to  imagination  a  being  wholly  human,  dwelling 
beside  the  fountain  or  the  tree.  In  the  same  way 
heaven  becomes  a  great  human  father,  the  sea  an  earth- 
shaking  potentate  drawn  by  dolphins  over  the  waves, 
the  sun  a  mighty  archer,  fire  a  lame  craftsman  (from  the 
flickering  of  flame  ?)  whose  smithy  is  underground  where 
the  volcanoes  are.  And  the  figures  once  arrived  at,  it 
was  no  hard  task  to  spin  out  their  stories  and  their 
relations  with  each  other,  and  to  connect  with  them  older 
tales,  as  taste  or  fancy  suggested. 

The  thorough  humanisation  of  the  gods,  the  clothing 
of  the  gods  in  the  highest  types  connected  with  free 
human  society,  is  the  first  great  contribution  made  by 
this  gifted  race  to  the  progress  of  religion.  Receiving 
from  the  earlier  world  the  same  kind  of  gods  as  other 
nations  did,  Greece  proceeded  to  treat  them  in  a  way 
of  her  own,  idealised  and  refined  the  parts  of  nature 
held  divine,  and  ascribed  to  them  not  only,  as  all  early 
races  do,  human  motives  and  human  passions,  but  also 
human  beauty  and  wisdom  and  goodness.  Whatever 
rude  materials  she  received  to  work  on,  either  from 
the  earlier  dwellers  on  Greek  soil  or  from  foreign  lands. 


282  History  of  Religion  part  iv 

she  made  them  her  own  by  transfiguring  them  into  ideal 
men  and  women.  Thus  the  Greeks  reached  the  position, 
which  they  taught  the  world  first  in  immortal  poetry 
and  then  in  immortal  plastic  art,  that  man  should  not 
bow  down  to  anything  that  is  beneath  him,  and  that 
nature  can  only  become  fit  to  be  worshipped  by  being 
idealised  and  made  human.  An  end  was  made  to  the 
dark  imagination  which  was  so  apt  to  creep  over  all 
early  religion,  that  deity  and  humanity  may  be  different 
and  opposite  ;  that  an  object  devoid  of  reason,  an  object 
or  an  animal  admired  not  for  its  goodness  but  for  some- 
thing about  it  which  man  cannot  understand,  may  be 
his  god  and  have  a  claim  to  his  allegiance.  God  and 
man  are  of  the  same  nature,  the  Greeks  found  ;  to  arrive 
at  a  true  idea  of  a  god  we  have  to  form,  on  the  basis  of 
the  natural  object  where  he  is  supposed  to  dwell,  the 
image  of  an  ideal  man  or  woman.  This  was  a  great 
step,  but  in  this  conception  of  deity  the  Greeks  also 
laid  up  for  themselves,  as  we  shall  see,  many  difficulties. 
Early  Eastern  Influences. — Our  positive  knowledge 
of  Greek  history  begins  about  the  middle  of  the  second 
millennium  B.C. ;  we  have  information  of  this  period  in 
the  ruins  of  Mycenae  and  Tiryns  and  other  places. 
These  remains  attest  a  political  condition  widely 
different  from  that  of  the  patriarchal  settlements  of  the 
period  when  the  Greeks  were  emerging  from  Aryan 
barbarism  ;  very  different  also  from  the  free  city  life 
which  came  afterwards.  The  recent  excavations  have 
brought  to  light  the  palaces  of  kings,  built,  it  is  evident, 
according  to  an  Eastern  type,  and  with  arrangements 
for  the  burial  and  worship  of  dead  potentates,  not 
unlike  those  of  the  pyramids.  The  art  is  rude,  but 
shows  large  forces  to  have  been  at  the  command  of 
those  who  directed  it.  We  have  here,  therefore,  a  state 
of  matters  such  as  that  described  in  the  Homeric  poems, 
in  which  petty  kings  rule  in  many  of  the  Greek  towns, 
some  of  them  being  personages  of  great  rank  and 
power.     The  movement  in  civilisation  attested  by  these 


CHAP.   XVI 


Greece  283 


remains  is  admitted  to  be  due  to  an  impulse  from 
the  East;  but  whether  this  impulse  was  imparted  by 
the  voyages  of  Phenician  discoverers  and  merchants, 
or  whether  it  came  by  land  along  the  trade  routes  of 
Asia  Minor  and  across  the  Egean,  is  uncertain.  It  is  in 
any  case  traceable  to  North  Syria,  where  in  the  early 
part  of  the  second  millennium  B.C.  Babylonian  and 
Egyptian  influences  met  and  gave  rise  to  some  rude 
civilisation.  Greece  was  not  conquered  from  the  East, 
but  stirred  to  new  life  by  the  communication  of  Eastern 
ideas. 

Greek  religion  was  not  much  assisted,  or  indeed 
much  modified  in  any  way,  by  this  movement.  The 
worship  of  ancestors  which  went  on  in  the  palaces  was 
not  contrary  to  Greek  sentiment,  perhaps  not  even 
much  more  elaborate  than  that  sentiment  required. 
But  this  part  of  religion  was  not  a  growing  thing  in 
Greece ;  and  the  royal  practices  did  not  prevent  it  from 
dyiqg  gradually  away  in  later  times.  That  any  god 
was  imported  into  Greece  at  this  time,  is  not  proved. 
Where  Greeks  and  Phenicians  met,  as  in  some  of  the 
islands,  a  Greek  and  an  Eastern  god  might  be  identified  ; 
the  worship  of  Aphrodite  and  that  of  Astarte  were 
fused  in  this  way  in  Cyprus,  and  Aphrodite  may  thus 
have  acquired  some  new  characteristics  even  in  Greece. 
This  is  not  certain.  Perhaps  the  most  important  thing 
to  notice  in  this  connection  is  that  the  new  type  of 
society  at  the  royal  courts  may  have  furnished  a  model 
for  the  arrangement  of  the  heavenly  family  when  that 
arrangement  came  to  be  made.  The  Eastern  influence 
came  to  an  end  in  time,  and  the  pressure  being 
removed,  the  monarchies  crumbled  away,  the  court 
worships  were  discontinued,  and  Greece  was  left  free, 
after  this  awaking  to  fuller  life,  to  pursue  her  own 
thoughts  in  her  own  fashion. 

Homer  was  regarded  by  the  Greeks  who  lived  after 
him  as  the  founder  of  their  religion.  Herodotus  con- 
siders (ii.  53)  that  Homer  and  Hesiod  lived  four  hundred 


PART   IV 


284  Histoiy  of  Religion 

years  before  his  time,  and  that  it  was  they  who  framed 
a  theogony  for  the  Greeks,  gave  names  to  the  gods 
assigned  to  them  honours  and  arts,  and  declared  their 
several  forms.  These  writers  accordingly  formed  a 
standard  of  religious  belief;  we  know  that  their  works 
were  the  basis  of  the  education  of  the  Greek,  and  they 
thus  provided  an  early  bond  of  national  unity. 

The  Homeric  poems  are  the   outcome,  whether   we 
regard  them  as  the  work  of  one  singer  or  of  two,  or  of 
a  whole  school,  of  long  processes  of  growth.     The  {aoetic 
art  which  makes  them  the  delight  of  all  mankind  is  not 
a  first  experiment,  but  the  ripe  result  of  an  elaborate 
method.     The  stories  and  the  wisdom  they  contain  are 
brought  together  from  many  quarters  by  long  accumula- 
tion.    And  in  the  same  way  the  accounts  they  give  of 
the   gods    individually  and    of  their   relations   to  each 
other  are  not  thrown  together   at   haphazard,  but  are 
the   result  of  a  work  of  unconscious  art  which  must 
have  been  carried  on  for  centuries  before  it  issued  in 
this  form.     Homer  does  not  by  any  means  repeat  all 
the  stories  he  knows  about  the  gods.     He  passes  over 
many  local  myths,  especially  those  of  the  more  repulsive 
order,  which  were  known   for  centuries  after,  and   un- 
doubtedly existed   in   his   day;    only  what   is  "worthy 
of  a  pious  bard"  does  he  reproduce.     A  pious  bard, 
however,   had    considerable    latitude;    and   the   phrase 
does  not  represent  all  that   Homer  was.     He  was  an 
entertainer  of  the  public  at  royal  courts,  where  a  feast 
was  incomplete  without  him  {Odyssey  viii.) ;  he  had  to 
produce  his  songs  at  banquets  or  in  the  open  air  at 
festivals;    what  he  gave  had  to  be  entertaining.     This 
could  not  but  influence   his   choice  of  materials   even 
when  the  gods  were  his  theme.     He  could  not  deal  in 
what  was  most  terrible  about  the  gods,  nor  could    he 
enter  into  speculations  or  mysteries,  nor  could  he  make 
V  use  of  a  legend  which,  though    it   had   point   for   the 
locality  it  belonged   to,  was  not  generally  interesting. 
What  was  powerful  and  dramatic,  what  all  men  could 


CHAP.  XVI  Greece  285 

understand,  what  was  curious  and  piquant,  what  met 
the  general  sentiment,  that  he  would  be  led  to  adopt 
and  to  work  up  into  a  telling  form  ;  he  naturally  sought 
after  broad  pictures,  amusing  conversations,  simple  and 
true  emotions,  curious  incidents  connected  with  well- 
known  characters.  Religion,  it  is  plain,  could  not  gain 
in  depth  and  intensity  from  the  treatment  of  such 
poets ;  many  of  the  thoughts  men  had  about  the  gods 
'could  not  find  expression  in  their  lines.  But,  on  the 
other  hand,  we  have  the  fact  that  the  Greeks  accepted 
the  Homeric  representation  of  their  religion  as  the 
standard  one ;  not  till  it  had  existed  for  centuries  were 
voices  raised  against  it.  And  this  is  not  strange. 
Homer  took  away  nothing  from  the  religion  of  any 
Greek ;  no  local  worship  was  in  any  way  infringed 
upon  by  him  ;  and  on  the  other  side  he  gave  to  the 
Greek  world,  whose  belief  consisted  formerly  in  a 
multitude  of  disconnected  or  even  inconsistent  legends, 
a  united  system  of  gods,  in  which  there  was  at  that 
stage  rest  for  the  mind,  and  for  the  imagination  an 
inexhaustible  spring  of  ideal  beauty. 

The  Homeric  Gods. — What,  then,  is  the  religion  of 
Homer?  The  gods  are  a  set  of  beings  not  very  unlike 
men ;  they  present  a  curious  combination  of  human 
frailty  with  superhuman  powers  and  virtues.  To  speak 
first  of  the  physical  side  of  their  nature,  the  gods  are 
far  stronger  than  men,  their  frame  is  huger,  their  eye 
keener,  their  voice  louder ;  like  the  sorcerer  of  savage 
times,  they  can  assume  other  shapes  to  gain  their  ends, 
they  can  become  invisible,  or  they  can  travel  very  swiftly 
through  the  air.  Yet,  on  the  other  hand,  they  can  be 
wounded  when  they  strive  even  with  men ;  accidents 
happen  to  them,  they  require  to  eat  and  drink.  They 
eat,  it  is  true,  ambrosia,  and  drink  nectar,  which  give 
immortality ;  and  they  have  in  their  veins  not  human 
blood  but  divine  ichor.  It  is  the  fact  of  their  immortality 
that  makes  them  different  from  men  ;  it  has  happened 
that  a  man  obtained  immortality  and  became  thereby 


y 


2  86  History  of  Religion  part  iv 

a  god.  The  line  between  gods  and  men  may  be  crossed ; 
in  former  times  it  was  crossed  more  frequently.  The 
gods  entered  into  relations  with  mortals ;  many  of  the 
heroes  are  of  divine  extraction,  and  the  gods  are  still 
interested  in  the  royal  houses  they  thus  founded.  But 
such  unions  do  not  take  place  in  the  poet's  time.  The 
world  is  growing  less  divine. 

Homer,  however,  looks  further  back  than  this,  and  we 
find  in  him  the  belief,  found  also  in  India  and  in  Iceland,* 
that  an  older  and  more  savage  race  of  gods  once  ruled, 
whom  the  present  dynasty  conquered  and  dethroned. 
Of  that  older  set  was  Kronos,  the  father  of  Zeus,  and 
the  Titans,  who  are  now  cast  down  to  Tartarus,  the 
nethermost  region  of  all.  The  world  known  to  men 
was  apportioned  at  the  beginning  of  the  present  age 
to  the  three  sons  of  Kronos,  Zeus  obtaining  the  upper 
world,  including  heaven,  which  is  at  the  top  of  Mount 
Olympus  in  Thessaly ;  Poseidon  the  sea,  and  Hades 
the  under -world,  above  Tartarus,  to  which  men  go 
after  death. 

Zeus  rules  in  Olympus.  He  presides  there  over  those 
gods  who  are  at  present  in  power.  He  summons  them 
to  council,  he  sits  at  meals  with  them.  They  are  a  very 
human  set  of  beings.  They  are  moved  by  ordinary 
human  motives ;  love  and  revenge,  jealousy  and  anger, 
rule  in  their  breasts.  They  do  not  act  from  eternal 
principles,  but  as  men  do,  from  sudden  impulses  or  from 
the  desire  of  temporary  advantages  for  themselves  or  for 
their  favourites.  They  even  indulge  in  loose  amours, 
and  are  brought  into  ridiculous  situations.  They  laugh 
at  each  other  ;  the  stronger  god  hurls  the  weaker  out  of 
Olympus  to  the  earth.  Taking  them  together,  we  do 
not  find  the  Olympians  an  impressive  set  of  beings. 
Taking  them,  however,  one  by  one,  we  judge  of  them 
quite  differently.  The  individual  gods  represent  lofty 
ideals  and  are  not  unworthy  of  worship.  Whatever  they 
were  once,  powers  of  nature,  fetishes  or  men,  whatever 
village  legends  they  have  brought  with  them  from  their 


CHAP.  XVI  Greece  287 

native  place,  or  whatever  traits  of  savage  life  still  cleave 
to  them,  to  the  poet  they  are  the  embodiments  of 
various  moral  excellences.  Zeus,  father  of  gods  and 
men,  combines  in  his  character  the  attributes  of 
righteousness  and  of  kindness ;  he  is  the  founder  of 
social  order  and  the  defender  of  suppliants,  he  possesses 
all  wisdom.  Hera  is  the  matron  of  fully  unfolded 
beauty  and  matchless  dignity ;  Apollo  is  the  faithful 
son  who  carries  out  his  father's  counsel ;  Athene  is 
the  warrior-maiden  skilled  in  battle  but  equipped  with 
every  kind  of  skill,  best  counsellor  and  guide  for  the 
mortal  whom  she  favours ;  Aphrodite  is  the  goddess 
of  love,  in  whose  girdle  are  contained  all  charms ;  Ares 
is  the  impetuous  warrior,  Hermes  the  trusty  messenger, 
of  the  heavenly  circle ;  Hephaestus,  the  lame  and 
awkward  smith,  is  the  artificer  for  the  gods  of  all 
manner  of  cunning  work  in  metal.  Around  and  under 
the  Olympians  are  many  other  deities ;  such  as  Hebe, 
the  budding  girl,  and  Ganymede,  the  youth  born  of 
human  race  but  taken  up  to  heaven  for  his  beauty  to 
minister  to  the  gods  at  their  banquets.  Aphrodite  is 
attended  by  the  graces,  Apollo  by  the  Muses,  and  the 
world  is  not  stripped  by  Homer  of  its  local  deities, 
although  the  chief  deities  now  dwell  aloft ;  mountains, 
rivers,  caves  and  isles  of  ocean,  all  have  their  immortal 
occupants. 

Worship  in  Homer. — The  gods  being  of  such  a  nature, 
what  relations  does  man  keep  up  with  them,  and  how 
do  they  affect  his  life?  Worship  follows  the  simple 
practice  of  the  early  world.  It  is  not  priestly.  There 
are  priests,  and  they  offer  sacrifices  regularly  at  the 
shrines  of  which  they  have  charge,  but  the  king  can 
sacrifice,  or  the  head  of  the  house;  and  while  one  or 
two  temples  are  mentioned  in  the  Iliad,  sacrifice  may 
be  offered  anywhere.  Temples  first  appear  in  Greece 
merely  as  shelters  for  images,  but  in  the  Iliad  the  god 
is  generally  worshipped  not  by  means  of  an  image  but 
as  himself  directly  present ;  the  need  of  temples  has  not 


288  History  of  Religion  part  iv 

yet  arisen.  In  the  Odyssey  temples  of  the  gods  are 
spoken  of  as  buildings  no  town  could  be  without,  but 
this  is  less  primitive.  Sacrifice  is  a  feast  in  which  the 
god's  portion  of  the  viands  is  first  offered  to  him,  and 
the  worshippers  then  eat  and  drink  to  their  hearts' 
content.  There  is  a  detailed  description  of  the  pro- 
ceedings in  Iliad  i.  456  sqq.  Here  after  the  feast  there 
is  music  ;  "  All  day  long  worshipped  they  the  god  with 
music,  singing  the  beautiful  pa^an  to  the  Fardarter 
(Apollo)  ;  and  his  heart  was  glad  to  hear."  "  The  gods 
appear  manifest  amongst  us,"  we  read  in  the  seventh 
book  of  the  Odyssey,  "  whensoever  we  offer  glorious 
hecatombs,  and  they  feast  by  our  side,  sitting  at  the 
same  board."  There  is  nothing  of  the  nature  of  an 
expiation  about  such  a  sacrifice ;  it  is  simply  the 
renewal  of  the  bond  between  the  god  and  those  who 
look  for  his  aid,  when  a  new  enterprise  is  about  to  be 
undertaken  or  a  solemn  engagement  is  entered  on. 
Prayers  are  very  simple.  Thus  prays  the  wounded 
Diomede  to  Athene  {Iliad  w.  115):  "  Hear  me,  daughter 
of  segis-bearing  Zeus,  unwearied  maiden!  If  ever  in 
kindly  mood  thou  stoodest  by  my  father  in  the  heat 
of  battle,  even  so  be  thou  kind  to  me,  Athene !  Grant 
me  to  slay  this  man,  and  bring  within  my  spear-cast 
him  that  took  advantage  to  shoot  me,  and  boasteth 
over  me !  " 

As  there  are  no  bad  gods,  good  and  evil  are  con- 
sidered to  be  sent  by  the  same  beings.  Thus  there  is 
a  great  deal  of  uncertainty  in  men's  relations  to  the 
gods.  "  All  men  need  the  gods,"  we  read  ;  the  Homeric 
hero  regards  the  companionship  of  a  god  as  proper  and 
necessary  for  his  enterprises.  But  some  trouble  must 
be  taken  in  order  to  secure  their  favour.  They  must 
not  be  neglected  ;  their  signs  must  be  attended  to ; 
above  all,  a  man  must  be  reverent  and  must  studiously 
practise  moderation  in  his  conduct  and  in  his  ways  of 
thinking ;  else  the  gods  may  easily  be  offended  or  made 
jealous,  and  withdraw  their  countenance.     And  if  they 


CHAP.   XVI 


Greece  289 


are  to  a  certain  extent  capricious,  there  is  another  con- 
sideration which  impairs  confidence  in  them.     They  are 
not  all-powerful.     There  is  a  point  beyond  which  they 
cannot  give  a  man  any  help.     Each  man  has  a  fate  or 
destiny,  which  the  gods  did  not  fix  and  with  which  they 
.  cannot    interfere.      When  his    hour   comes,  they  must 
leave  him  to  his  doom  ;  indeed  they  may  even  deceive 
him,  and  lead  him  into  folly  so  that  his  fate  shall  over- 
take him.     The  punishment  of  crime,  both  in  this  world 
and  afterwards,  is  committed  to  a  special  set  of  beings, 
the  Erinnyes.     The  gods  who  are  most  worshipped  do 
not  exercise  that    function  ;    they  are   not   immovably 
identified    with    the    moral    order   of   the   world,   but 
frequently  deviate  from  it  themselves.     In  the  Odyssey, 
it  is  true,  we  meet  with  a  deeper  feeling.     Here  Zeus  is 
a  kind  of  providence,  in  whom  a  man  may  trust  when 
he  does  right,  and  to  all  whose  dispensations  it  behoves 
him    humbly   to   submit.       A    root    of   monotheism    is 
present  here,  as  in  all  the  Aryan  religions  from  the  first, 
and  in  Greece  it  is  destined  to  have  a  stately  growth. 
The    Homeric   pantheon,  however,  as  a  whole,  shows 
religion  at  a  stage  in  which   it  is  rather  an  external 
ornament  to  life  than  an  inner   inspiration.     Perhaps 
there  was  never  a  set  of  real  men  who  thought  of  the 
gods  and  addressed  them  according  to  the  fashion  of 
Homer.     If  such  a  religion  ever  actually  existed,  it  was 
not  a  strong  one.     These  gods,  with  their  caprices  and 
infirmities  and  their  limited  power,  could  never  exercise 
any  strong  moral  influence  or  rouse  any  passion  in  their 
worshippers.     They  are  fair-weather  gods  ;  the  religion 
is  one  of  children,  in  whom  conscience  is  not  yet  awake 
and  the  deeper  spiritual  needs  have  not  yet  appeared. 
What  the  mind  of  the  Greek  has  done  up  to  this  stage 
is  to  discover  that  nature  is  not  above  him  ;  the  powers 
of  nature   are  human   to   him  ;    they   are    divine   not 
because  they  are  essentially  different  from  himself,  but 
because  they  are  matchless  ideals  of  his  own  qualities. 
It  is  a  religion  of  free  men.     But  the  Greek  has  not 

T 


290  History  of  Religion  part  iv 

yet  discovered  how  different  he  himself  is  from  all  that 
is  around  him  ;  that  element  of  himself  which  is  above 
nature  will  when  he  discovers  it  make  such  a  religion  as 
the  Homeric  for  ever  impossible  to  him. 

Omens. — As  the  godhead  is  never  far  away  from  the 
Homeric  Greek,  and  is  an  active  being  who  takes  an 
interest  in  human  affairs,  signs  of  his  presence  are  not 
infrequent.  The  air  is  the  scene  of  them  ;  in  the  flight 
of  birds,  in  sudden  noises,  the  gods  send  messages  ; 
lightning  is  a  sign  from  Zeus  of  approaching  rain  or 
hail,  it  may  be  of  approaching  war.  There  are  rules 
for  the  interpretation  of  signs,  which,  however,  are  in 
many  cases  of  doubtful  significance.  Dreams  also  are 
a  favourite  channel  for  divine  communications,  but  they 
also  may  be  interpreted  wrongly.  There  are_  persons 
who  have  a  special  gift  for  knowing  the  divine  will; 
the  seer  {^avTii)  is  enlightened  by  the  deity  not  by  an 
outward  sign  but  inwardly;  he  hears  the  god's  voice, 
and  can  declare  the  divine  will  directly.  This  gift  may 
reside  in  a  certain  family,  and  may  be  attached  to 
a  certain  spot,  where  a  regular  oracle  is  open  for  con- 
sultation. At  Dodona  we  read  that  the  Selloi  or  Helloi, 
a  band  or  family  of  priests  of  ascetic  habits,  interpret 
the  rustling  of  the  sacred  oak,  and  Agamemnon  consults 
the  Pythia,  the  Delphic  priestess,  before  the  Trojan 
war. 

The  State  after  Death.— With  regard  to  the  state 
after  death,  belief  is  not  uniform  in  Homer.  There  are 
elaborate  funeral  rites  which  point  to  the  assumption 
that  the  spirit  of  the  hero  is  living  somewhere  and  needs 
various  things.  But  the  life  of  the  departed  was  not 
mapped  out  in  Greece  as  it  was  in  Egypt.  The  ritual 
of  Mycense  had  little  influence,  for  the  funeral  celebra- 
tions in  Homer  are  very  similar  to  those  of  other  early 
Aryan  peoples,  and  undoubtedly  were  not  imported. 
What  then  is  thought  of  the  present  existence  of  the 
hero  ?  He  has  ceased  to  exist.  The  body  is  the  man, 
the  spirit  when  it  has  left  the  body  has  but  a  shadow- 


CHAP.  XVI  Greece 


291 


life,  without  any  strength  or  hope ;  at  the  most  it  may 
revive  a  little  at  the  taste  of  blood.  But  while  the 
worship  of  the  departed  is  seen  from  Homer  to  be 
decaying  among  the  Greeks,  imagination  is  seen  to  be 
occupied  in  more  than  one  direction  with  the  regions 
where  they  are,  and  to  be  asserting  for  them  a  more 
real  and  active  existence  than  the  old  beliefs  allowed. 
The  subterranean  kingdom  of  Hades  (the  "  Invisible  ") 
is  acquiring  clearer  shape.  The  punishments  are 
described  which  certain  great  transgressors,  such  as 
Tantalus  and  Ixion,  are  there  undergoing;  and  other 
details  are  also  known.  Of  a  different  spirit  is  the 
conception  of  the  Elysian  plains  in  the  far  west,  whither 
the  hero  is  taken  by  the  gods  when  he  dies,  and  where 
there  is  no  snow  nor  storm  nor  rain. 

Homer   was   not   the   only   poet   who  furnished  the 
Greeks   with   a   system    of  their   gods;    nor    was    his 
system  everywhere  accepted   without   demur.     Hesiod, 
writing  in  the  latter  half  of  the   eighth    century   B.C., 
gives    a   "theogony"    or  birth    of   the   gods,    which    is 
also  a  genesis  or  origin  of  the  world,  for  to  the  Greek 
mind   the    gods    and   the   world    came   into   existence 
together.     He  complains  of  those  who  on  this  subject 
have  taught   fictions   which   resemble   truths,  referring 
perhaps   to    Homer.      His   own   system   of  the   world 
is  not  a  light  and  airy  fabric  but  a   laborious   work, 
due   no  doubt  to  professional  or  priestly  industry,  in 
which   the   attempt    is    made   to   treat   all   the   divine 
figures  or  half-figured  spirits  the  Greeks  knew,  genea- 
logically, and  to  give  a  complete  enumeration  of  them. 
Myths  are  given,  some  of  them  of  a  horrible  character, 
which   do   not  occur  in    Homer.      The   battle   of  the 
gods   with   the   Titans   occupies   a   large   part    of   the 
poem,   and   it   concludes    with   a   collection   of  stories 
showing  the  descent  of  heroes  from  alliances  between 
gods  and  mortals.     This  work,  as   we   saw,  was   con- 
sidered, along  with  the  Homeric  poems,  as  a  standard 
authority  on  the  subject  of  the  gods,  and  was  appealed 


292  History  of  Religion  .part  iv 

to  even  in  the  early  Christian  centuries  as  showing 
what  the  Greeks  believed. 

The  Poets  and  the  Working-  Religrion. — The  work 
of  these  poets  proves  that  the  Greeks  in  their  days 
were  anxious  to  arrive  at  clear  and  harmonious  con- 
ceptions about  the  gods.  The  movement  on  which 
Homer  and  Hesiod  set  their  seal,  of  fixing  the 
characters  and  attributes  of  the  various  deities,  must 
have  been  long  going  on  ;  and  it  led,  as  we  see,  to 
different  results  in  different  places.  That  labour  when 
accomplished  endowed  Greece  with  a  new  religion. 
The  local  rite  still  went  on,  which  acknowledged  no 
central  authority  and  presented  the  spectacle  of  an 
infinite  diversity.  Each  city  carried  on  in  grave  and 
solemn  fashion  the  traditional  worship  of  its  own 
gods,  on  whose  favour  its  prosperity  depended.  The 
other  gods  of  the  Pantheon  the  city  did  not  need  to 
worship ;  and  moreover  local  worship  was  addressed 
to  a  large  extent  to  the  Chthonian  or  earth-gods,  as 
Demeter  and  Dionysus,  of  whom  the  epic  poems  know 
but  little.  The  poets  were  of  little  assistance  therefore 
to  the  working  religion ;  but  on  the  other  hand  the 
happy  and  beautiful  deities  of  Homer  found  entrance 
wherever  poetry  was  loved.  This  was  a  religion  for 
all  Greece ;  these  gods  were  national ;  though  some 
of  them  belonged  originally  to  .^olia,  they  had  become 
national  by  being  enshrined  in  poetry  which  the  whole 
nation  regarded  as  its  own.  The  Homeric  conception 
of  deity  acted  therefore  on  the  whole  Greek  mind ; 
all  gods  rose  in  rank  by  the  example,  a  subject  was 
set  before  the  mind  of  the  people,  which  the  closely 
succeeding  development  of  religious  art  shows  to  have 
been  studied  in  the  noblest  way. 

Rise  of  Religious  Art. — The  seventh  century  B.C. 
was  a  period  of  rapid  development  and  of  great 
prosperity  in  Greece.  It  was  the  age  of  colonisation ; 
manufacture  and  trade  were  active,  and  though  the 
Phenicians  were  not  now  in  the  Egean,  Greeks  sailed 


CHAP.  XVI  Greece  293 

to  the  East  and  brought  home  with  them  many  ideas. 
It  was  a  time  like  the  sixteenth  century  in  Europe, 
when  the  world  of  geography  was  quickly  opening 
out,  and  views  and  sentiments  were  also  widening. 
Worship  could  not  fail  to  share  in  the  upward  move- 
ment of  such  a  period,  and  it  is  here  that  we  find 
the  appearance  of  the  ideas  in  religious  art  which 
have  made  Greece  the  envy  of  the  world.  Architecture 
received  a  new  impulse  from  Egypt  and  Babylon ; 
dwellings  were  built,  not  for  human  rulers,  as  in  the 
Mycenaean  period,  but  for  the  gods.  In  country  districts 
or  small  towns  the  wooden  shed  might  still  suffice  to 
shelter  the  rude  image,  but  in  large  towns,  where  the 
higher  conception  of  the  gods  and  the  artistic  impulse 
were  both  present  in  many  minds,  temples  of  more 
durable  material  were  built.  This  came  to  be  a 
universal  practice ;  among  the  first  tasks  of  a  new 
colony  was  always  that  of  erecting  on  a  commanding 
site  in  the  rising  town,  splendid  temples  to  the  gods 
of  the  mother  city.  The  Greek  temple  is  not  a  place 
to  accommodate  a  large  body  of  worshippers,  but  a 
dwelling  for  the  god.  It  is  of  oblong  shape,  and  is 
placed  on  a  raised  platform  which  is  ascended  by 
steps.  It  is  generally  surrounded  by  pillars,  is  roofed, 
and  has  a  low  gable  at  each  end.  The  most  important 
chamber  in  it  is  that  containing  the  image  of  the  god. 
From  his  dim  chamber  the  god  looks  out  to  the  east 
through  the  doorway  facing  him,  which  opens  on  the 
pillared  portico  in  front.  Here  the  worshipper  stands 
when  praying,  his  face  turned  westward  to  the  god. 
As  it  was  essential  that  the  smoke  of  the  sacrifice 
should  ascend  freely  to  heaven,  the  god's  real  dwelling, 
the  altar  stood  outside.  In  some  cases  the  roof  was 
partly  open,  and  the  altar  could  stand  under  the  sky 
in  the  cella  of  the  god. 

In  the  building  and  adornment  of  the  temples  Greek 
art  found  its  highest  exercise.  The  architecture  of 
those  soecimens  which  can  still  be  seen  or  described 


294  History  of  Religion  part  iv 

is  of  a  dignity  and  beauty  never  before  attained  ;  the 
beings  must  have  been  lofty  and  reverend  indeed  for 
whom  such  dwelh'ngs  were  formed.  The  gable  spaces 
and  the  flat  surfaces  between  the  tops  of  the  pillars 
and  the  roof  gave  opportunity  for  sculpture ;  and  the 
archaeologist  traces  on  these  metopes  (spaces  between 
the  beam-ends  under  the  roof)  and  friezes,  the  progress 
of  Greek  sculpture  from  a  rude  stage  to  that  in  which 
the  sculptor  has  gained  complete  mastery  over  his 
material,  and  can  give  an  imposing  representation  of 
a  myth,  or  place  on  the  marble  a  complete  religious 
procession  of  brave  men  and  fair  women.  The  images 
of  the  gods  to  be  placed  in  the  temples  called  forth 
the  artist's  highest  skill ;  even  when  the  rude  old  god 
was  retained,  a  fine  work  of  art  could  also  find  place. 
It  is  the  ideal  gods  of  poetry  that  are  coming  to  be 
worshipped  ;  the  conception  of  the  poet  is  expressed 
in  marble.  Sculpture,  however,  came  to  its  highest 
point  in  Greece  somewhat  later  than  architecture.  And 
offerings  were  made  to  the  temples  of  just  such  rare 
and  costly  things  as  men  loved  then  and  love  still 
to  store  up  in  their  houses, — bowls  and  cups  wrought 
curiously  in  precious  metals,  statues  and  tapestries 
and  all  kinds  of  treasure. 

Festivals  and  Games. — The  temple  for  which  so 
much  was  done,  formed  the  centre  of  the  city  where 
it  stood.  In  it  the  town  deposited  its  treasure  and  its 
documents;  there  oaths  and  agreements  were  ratified. 
There  also  at  certain  times,  such  as  the  annual  festival 
of  the  god  or  the  anniversary  of  some  happy  event 
in  the  history  of  the  town, — and  as  time  went  on 
such  occasions  tended  to  multiply,  —  the  town  kept 
holiday.  Women  escaped  from  their  monotonous  con- 
finement and  joined  the  procession  to  the  holy  place, 
perhaps  carrying  a  new  dress  for  the  deity.  A  sacrifice 
was  offered,  the  god  received  his  share  of  the  victim 
or  victims,  and  the  worshippers  feasted  on  what  re- 
mained.    But  before  this  part  of  the  proceedings  arrived 


CHAP.  XVI  Greece  295 

there  was  a  pause,  which  was  filled  up  with  various 
exercises  all  connected  with  the  act  of  worship,  but 
tending  also  in  a  high  degree  to  the  delight  of  those 
taking  part  in  it.  Dancing  formed  a  part  of  every 
rite,  accompanied  of  course  with  music,  and  consist- 
ing not  of  a  careless  exercise  of  the  limbs,  but  of 
a  measured  and  carefully  trained  set  of  movements 
expressive  of  the  emotions  connected  with  the  occasion. 
This  part  of  the  religious  act  is  obviously  capable  of 
great  expansion.  We  find  the  art  of  poetry  also 
making  its  contributions  to  religious  art ;  poems  are 
recited  bearing  on  the  history  of  the  god.  The  sacrifice 
is  followed  by  contests  of  various  kinds  ;  the  singers 
compete  for  a  prize,  and  athletic  sports  also  take 
place,  the  competitors  for  which  have  long  been  in 
training  for  them.  The  winners  are  crowned  with  a 
wreath  or  branch  of  the  plant  sacred  to  the  god.  The 
games  of  Greece,  which  thus  arose  out  of  acts  of 
worship,  and  some  of  which  became  so  famous  and 
attracted  competitors  from  every  Greek-speaking  land, 
are  a  notable  sign  of  the  spirit  of  Greek  piety.  There 
is  no  asceticism  in  Greek  religion  ;  the  god  is  repre- 
sented as  a  beautiful  human  person,  and  his  worshippers 
appear  before  him  naked,  in  the  fulness  of  their  youth- 
ful beauty  and  of  their  well-trained  vigour,  and  offer 
him  their  strength  and  skill  in  highest  exercise ; — 
the  whole  city,  or  a  crowd  much  larger  than  the 
city,  rejoicing  in  the  spectacle. 

Thus  does  Greek  religion  enlist  in  its  service  all 
the  arts,  and  increase  as  they  increase.  At  this  period 
irrational  manifestations  of  piety  tend  to  disappear, 
human  sacrifice  and  the  worship  of  animals  are  heard 
of  afterwards  only  in  remote  quarters.  The  religion 
which  now  prevails  is  a  bright  and  happy  self-identi- 
fication with  a  being  conceived  as  a  type  of  human 
beauty  and  excellence,  by  being  as  far  as  possible 
beautiful  oneself,  creating  beautiful  objects,  composing 
beautiful  verse,  training  the  body  to  its  highest  pitch 


296  History  of  Religion  part  iv 

of  strength  and  agility,  and  displaying  its  powers  in 
manly  contests.  This  conception  of  religion,  for  a  short 
time  realised  in  Greece,  still  haunts  the  mind  as  a  vision 
which  once  seen  can  never  be  forgotten.  No  one  whose 
eyes  have  opened  to  that  vision  can  regard  any  religious 
acts  in  which  the  effort  after  harmony  and  beauty  forms 
no  part,  as  other  than  degraded  and  unworthy. 

Zeus  and  Apollo. — It  is  impossible  here  to  enter 
specially  on  the  worship  of  the  individual  gods.  Two 
of  the  gods,  however,  the  same  who  even  in  Homer 
stand  above  the  level  of  the  rest,  still  maintain  that 
superiority.  Zeus  draws  to  himself  more  and  more  all 
the  attributes  of  pure  deity ;  his  name  comes  more  and 
more  to  stand  simply  for  "  God,"  as  if  there  were  no 
other.  He  is  the  father  of  gods  and  men  ;  goodness 
and  love  are  natural  to  him.  He  is  the  supreme  Ruler 
and  Disposer,  whose  word  is  fate  and  whose  ways  pious 
thought  feels  called  to  justify ;  but  he  is  also  the 
Saviour,  to  whom  every  one  may  appeal.  He  is  the 
source  of  all  wisdom  ;  all  revelations  come  from  him. 
The  other  god  who  occupies  a  marked  position  is 
Apollo,  the  god  of  light  and  the  prophet  of  his  father 
Zeus.  His  oracle  at  Delphi  was  the  most  important  in 
Greece ;  it  was  held  to  be  the  centre  of  the  earth,  and 
was  a  meeting-place  for  Greeks  from  every  quarter. 
His  priests  exercised  through  the  oracle  a  great  in- 
fluence on  Greek  life,  and  as  their  god  required  strict 
purity  and  truthfulness  and  was  the  inspirer  of  every 
kind  of  art  and  of  none  but  noble  purposes,  the  worship 
of  Apollo  is  one  of  the  highest  forms  of  Greek  religion. 

Chang-e  of  the  Greek  Spirit  in  the  Sixth  Century. 
B.C. — But  the  time  was  at  hand  when  the  worship  of 
the  gods  of  the  poets  was  to  prove,  in  spite  of  all  that 
art  had  done  for  it,  inadequate  to  meet  the  spiritual 
needs  of  Greece.  Civilisation  advances  in  the  sixth 
century  B.C.  with  immense  rapidity ;  the  Greeks,  no 
longer  prompted  by  any  foreign  influence,  quickly  learn 
to  exercise  their  own  powers,  and  to  apply  them  in  new 


CHAP.   XVI 


Gy'eece  2  97 


directions.  Life  grows  richer  and  deeper,  new  modes  of 
sentiment  appear,  the  nation  grows  more  conscious  of 
its  unity,  and  at  the  same  time  the  individual  learns  to 
value  himself  more  highly  and  to  assert  himself  more 
strongly.  On  one  side  thought  awakes  to  an  inde- 
pendent career  and  traditional  beliefs  are  subjected 
to  criticism  ;  on  the  other  spiritual  needs  are  felt  which 
the  old  worship  does  not  satisfy,  and  for  which  religion 
has  to  find  new  outlets. 

It  is  far  beyond  our  scope  to  deal  with  the  religious 
movements  of  a  people  thus  passing  into  the  self- 
conscious  stage,  and  unfolding  with  unparalleled  fresh- 
ness and  power  all  the  various  activities  of  the  human 
mind.  We  can  only  point  out  a  few  of  the  lines  of 
development  which  become  prominent  at  this  period. 
And  firstly  we  notice  the  rise  of  rationalism,  that  is  V 
of  the  impulse  to  criticise  belief  and  to  ask  for  that 
element  in  it  which  approves  itself  to  the  reflecting 
mind.  Reason  asserts  its  right  to  judge  of  tradition ; 
the  doubter  suggests  emendations  in  the  legend  ;  the 
piously  inclined  turn  their  attention  to  those  parts  only 
which  are  capable  of  lofty  treatment.  This  tendency 
is  fatal  to  polytheism.  As  reason  knows  not  gods  but 
only  God,  the  gods  can  only  hold  their  place  on  con- 
dition that  they  are  what  God  must  be,  and  so  they 
all  tend  to  become  alike  in  their  character ;  attention 
is  turned  most  of  all  to  Zeus,  the  highest  god,  and  when 
others  are  worshipped,  it  is  as  his  prophets  or  delegates. 
The  poets  of  the  fifth  century  reflect  the  conviction 
which  all  the  higher  minds  of  their  country  were  now 
coming  to  hold,  that  the  world  is  under  the  rule  of  one 
god.  From  this  they  are  led  to  take  up  the  questions 
of  theodicy  or  of  the  principles  of  the  divine  govern- 
ment. iEschylus  and  Sophocles,  writing  perhaps  about 
the  same  time  as  the  author  of  the  Book  of  Job,  are  full 
of  problems  of  this  nature.  Why  is  Prometheus,  though 
the  noblest  benefactor  of  the  human  race,  doomed  to 
undergo   such   sufferings?     Why  does   a   curse   cleave 


298  History  of  Religion  part  iv 

to  a  certain  house,  evil  producing  evil  from  generation 
to  generation  ?  What  is  the  relation  between  the  divine 
laws  which  are  written  in  the  hearts  of  all  men,  and 
human  laws  which  sometimes  contradict  these  older 
ones?  Thus  to  the  educated  Greeks  of  the  fifth  century 
the  old  religion  had  in  its  essence  passed  away.  With 
unexampled  rapidity  had  the  journey  here  been  traced 
which  India  made  more  slowly,  which  Egypt  made  at 
a  very  early  period,  but  was  not  able  to  maintain,  and 
which  every  people  starting  from  polytheism  must  make 
if  their  religion  is  to  prosper. 

New  Religrious  Feeling-;  the  Mysteries.— But  the 
conscience  as  well  as  the  mind  of  Greece  awakes  at 
this  period,  and  Greek  religion  becomes  inspired  with  a 
deeper  feeling.  The  simple  objectivity  of  the  Homeric 
spirit  is  gone  in  which  man  could  frankly  worship 
beings  like  himself  and  not  very  far  above  himself. 
God  at  this  time  is  growing  greater  and  more  awful, 
and  man,  less  certain  of  himself,  is  beginning  to  feel 
a  new  sense  of  mystery  and  of  shortcoming.  Whether 
it  was  due  to  the  anxiety  and  depression  felt  in  Greece 
during  the  century  before  the  Persian  wars,  or  to  foreign 
influences,  or  mainly  to  the  natural  growth  of  the  Greek 
mind  itself,  religious  phenomena  of  a  new  kind  now 
appear.  Sacrifices  are  heard  of,  which  are  not  merely 
social  reunions  with  the  deity,  but  are  intended  to 
expiate  some  guilt  or  to  remove  some  pollution.  The 
sense  of  sin  has  arisen,  which  the  Homeric  world  knows 
not,  and  gives  a  new  colour  to  man's  converse  with  the 
deity.  Another  new  feature  is  the  rise  into  prominence 
of  cults  in  which  man  feels  himself  taken  possession  of 
and  inspired  by  his  god.  Some  of  these  belonged  to 
Asia  Minor,  the  great  centre  of  worships  accompanied 
with  ecstasy  and  frenzy,  but  some  were  of  native  growth. 
In  these  the  common  man  found  a  satisfaction  which 
the  stately  ceremonial  of  the  temples  did  not  afford. 
The  official  religion  had  grown  cold  and  distant ;  but 
in  the  worship  of  Demeter  or  Dionysus,  as  afterwards 


CHAP.    XVI 


Greece  299 


of  the  Phrygian  Cybele,  the  "  Great  Mother"  whom  the 
Romans  imported,  the  least  educated  could  feel  the  joy 
of  enthusiasm  and  of  self-forgetting  under  the  influence 
of  the  god,  and  could  be  closely  identified  with  the 
object  of  worship  by  performing  acts  in  which  the  ex- 
perience of  the  god  was  symbolically  repeated. 

The  rapid  rise  of  the  worships  of  Demeter  and 
Dionysus  thus  furnishes  an  instance  of  the  law  that  a 
religion  of  intellect  and  of  art  is  apt  to  be  confronted, 
even  when  it  appears  to  have  overcome  all  obstacles, 
by  a  religion  of  feeling,  in  which  all  the  fair  progress 
that  was  made  appears  to  be  entirely  set  at  naught. 
When  the  worship  of  Zeus,  Apollo,  and  Athene  was 
coming  to  its  highest  splendour,  these  cults  began  to 
spread  rapidly.  They  were  originally  peasant  rites  of 
unknown  antiquity  in  Attica  and  Boeotia,  in  which, 
after  the  manner  of  rustic  festivals,  the  coming  of  spring 
or  the  dying  of  the  year  were  celebrated  amid  jest  and 
song,  and  with  certain  prescribed  actions  in  which  the 
fortune  of  the  god,  corresponding  to  the  season,  was 
dramatically  set  forth.  In  spring  Demeter,  the  mother 
goddess,  received  her  daughter  Persephone,  who  had 
left  her  for  the  winter;  or  in  autumn  Dionysus,  the 
god  of  vegetation,  was  defeated  by  his  enemies  and 
driven  away  or  torn  in  pieces.  These  worships,  when 
developed  and  forming  a  prominent  part  of  Greek 
religion,  were  called  "  mysteries,"  not  because  the 
knowledge  of  them  was  confined  to  few,  but  because 
some  parts  of  them  were  transacted  in  deep  silence, 
and  were  the  objects  of  such  awe  and  reverence  that 
they  were  not  spoken  of  No  one,  moreover,  could 
assist  at  these  rites  without  being  solemnly  initiated 
after  a  period  of  probation  and  purification.  Of  the 
Eleusinian  mysteries  at  least,  which  were  the  most 
widely  diffused  and  which  formed  part  of  the  state 
religion  of  Athens,  ancient  writers  agree  in  their  report 
that  the  course  of  training  before  admission  was  power- 
fully elevating  and  solemnising,  so  that  the  period  of 


300  History  of  Religion  ^art  iV 

initiation  was  the  highest  point  of  the  religious  life.  It 
was  a  condition  that  the  candidate  should  be  pure  in 
heart  and  not  conscious  of  any  crime.  There  was 
apparently  no  doctrinal  instruction  ;  everything  was  to 
be  inferred  from  the  spectacle.  The  mind  was  kept  in 
a  state  of  intense  and  devout  expectation,  knowledge 
and  insight  growing,  it  was  held,  as  the  time  of 
admission  came  near.  Before  the  final  act  there  came 
a  period  of  fasting,  then  a  march  from  Athens  to 
Eleusis  along  the  sacred  way,  which  was  studded  with 
shrines ;  then  a  search  for  the  lost  goddess  in  the  dark 
of  a  moonless  night  on  the  plains  of  Eleusis,  and  then 
at  last  admission  to  the  brightly  -  lighted  building. 
Here  all  the  arts  were  enlisted  to  furnish  a  spectacle 
of  unparalleled  magnificence,  during  which  the  candidate 
was  allowed  to  touch  and  kiss  certain  sacred  objects  of 
a  simple  nature,  and  repeated  a  solemn  formula  at  his 
admission. 

By  partaking  in  these  rites  a  man  was  believed  to 
part  with  his  former  sins,  to  form  a  special  union  with 
the  deity,  in  whose  nature  he  was  made  to  partake, 
and  to  be  started  on  a  career  in  which  he  could  not 
fail  to  grow  morally  better.  It  is  easy  to  see  the 
immense  superiority  of  this  worship  to  the  official  rites 
of  the  temples.  The  great  point  is  that  a  new  principle 
of  religious  association  is  here  introduced.  The  tie 
which  binds  the  worshipper  to  his  god  and  to  his 
fellow-worshippers  is  no  longer  that  of  blood  or  of 
common  political  interests,  but  the  higher  one  of  a 
common  spiritual  experience.  All  Greeks  were  eligible 
for  initiation  at  Eleusis.  A  man  was  not  born  into 
this  circle,  but  entered  it  of  his  own  free  will  and  by 
means  of  voluntary  effort  and  self-denial.  A  community 
of  a  higher  order  thus  makes  its  appearance  in  Greek 
history,  in  which  the  limits  of  race  and  of  locality  are 
overstepped,  and  each  is  connected  with  the  rest,  because 
all  have  turned  of  their  own  voluntary  motion  to  the 
same   ideal  centre.     The  analogies  between  the  com- 


CHAP.  XVI  Greece  301 

munity  formed  on  the  mysteries  and  the  Christian 
Church  are  too  obvious  to  need  to  be  insisted  on.  The 
adversaries  of  Christianity  asserted  that  in  the  mysteries 
all  the  truths  and  the  whole  morality  of  that  religion 
were  to  be  found. 

Religion  and  Philosophy. — But  while  the  mysteries 
met  to  some  extent  the  craving  for  a  closer  union  with 
deity,  another  need  which  had  long  been  growing  in  the 
Greek  mind  was  to  be  satisfied  in  a  very  different  manner. 
The  Greek  religion  we  have  described  had  very  little  to 
offer  in  the  way  of  doctrine.  There  are  no  sacred  books 
in  it,  there  is  no  theology,  there  is  no  religious  instruction. 
When  the  mind  of  Greece  awoke  to  intellectual  life,  and 
the  demand  was  made  for  an  explanation  of  the  world, 
and  for  a  view  of  the  origin  of  things  which  should 
explain  man  to  himself,  the  Greek  religion  was  mani- 
festly little  fitted  to  meet  such  a  demand.  But  man 
has  everywhere  looked  to  religion  to  do  him  this  service, 
and  a  religion  which  is  incapable  of  rendering  it,  or 
which  like  Buddhism  explicitly  refuses  to  take  up  the 
task,  stands  in  a  perilous  position.  If  the  shrine  has 
no  doctrine  enabling  man  to  understand  the  origin  and 
the  connection  of  things,  he  will  seek  such  a  doctrine 
elsewhere,  and  religion  will  have  no  control  over  it. 
Another  alternative  is  that  of  Buddhism  where  in 
default  of  such  a  doctrine  man  is  condemned  to  sub- 
side into  intellectual  apathy. 

This,  however,  could  never  be  the  case  with  the 
Greeks,  and  their  fate  in  this  respect  proved  different 
from  that  of  any  other  people.  After  their  intellectual 
awakening  took  place,  and  when  they  had  begun  to  seek 
in  every  direction  for  a  first  principle  of  all  things,  never 
doubting  that  the  world  was  a  system  of  reason,  but 
trying  one  key  after  another  to  unlock  its  secret,  we 
find  that  religion  itself  became  aware  of  the  need  of 
the  times,  and  that  the  attempt  was  made,  late  in  the 
day  but  with  deep  earnestness  and  great  ability,  to 
construct  out  of  the  myths  a  reasoned  account  of  the 


302  History  of  Religion  part  iv 

origin  of  things.  This  was  the  aim  of  the  Orphic  poets. 
Orpheus,  the  mythical  singer  of  Thrace,  who  charmed 
men  and  beasts  with  his  songs  on  earth,  had  descended 
into  Hades  to  fetch  back  his  wife,  who  had  been  taken 
from  him,  and  had  beheld  the  secrets  of  the  under-world. 
The  school  which  was  named  after  him  dealt  with  the 
deepest  problems,  and  sought  to  explain  both  the  nature 
of  the  gods  and  the  destiny  of  the  human  soul.  It 
insisted  strongly  on  the  power  and  sole  headship  of 
Zeus,  in  whom  Greek  religion  had  possessed  from  Homer 
downwards  a  figure  fitted  for  a  monotheistic  position. 
"  Zeus  is  the  head,  Zeus  the  middle,  from  Zeus  are  all 
things  made.  He  is  male  and  female,  he  is  the  founda- 
tion of  the  earth  and  of  the  starry  heaven,  the  breath  in 
all,  the  strength  of  fire,  the  root  of  the  sea,  sun,  and  moon. 
Zeus  is  the  king,  the  progenitor  of  all  things."  The  god 
Dionysus  also  is  placed  by  the  Orphic  writers  at  the 
head  of  the  whole  process  of  creation.  The  myth  of 
his  dismemberment  and  of  the  scattering  of  his  ashes 
over  the  whole  world  is  made  to  symbolise  the  great 
thought  of  the  connection  of  all  things  with  the  same 
source  of  life.  Descriptions  were  also  given,  answering 
to  the  growing  sense  of  personal  responsibility,  of  the 
abodes  of  Hades  and  of  the  fate  of  souls  there,  and  of 
the  metempsychoses  through  which  the  soul  must  pass. 
This  teaching  had  an  influence  which  it  is  difficult  to 
measure  ;  it  acted  on  the  tragedians  in  their  magnificent 
attempts  to  reform  the  beliefs  of  their  country  by  making 
them  moral ;  it  is  to  be  traced  in  Plato,  it  also  found 
expression  in  the  mysteries.  In  its  own  development 
it  gave  rise  to  a  new  phenomenon  in  Greek  religion, 
that  of  itinerant  preachers  who  went  about  appealing 
to  individuals  to  take  thought  for  the  salvation  of  their 
souls,  and  also,  strange  to  say,  offering  private  charms 
and  spells  to  put  them  on  the  right  way  of  salvation. 
But  Greek  religion  was  not  thus  to  be  reformed. 
It  was  not  from  the  priests  that  the  growth  of  the 
higher  faith  of  Greece  was  to   proceed,  but  from  the 


^ 


CHAP.  XVI  Greece  303 

philosophers.  While  much  of  the  teaching  of  the  philo- 
sophers was  apparently  negative  and  destructive  of 
faith, — for  Greece  had  her  religious  sceptics  who  turned 
the  shafts  of  ridicule  on  existing  beliefs,  her  Agnostics 
who  considered  that  nothing  certain  could  be  affirmed 
about  the  gods,  and  even  her  secularists  who  held 
religion  to  be  a  mere  invention  of  priests  and  rulers 
for  their  own  purposes, — the  course  of  Greek  philosophy 
was,  on  the  whole,  constructive,  even  in  matters  of  faith, 
and  laboured  to  provide  religion  with  a  stable  founda- 
tion in  thought.  In  this  great  movement  of  the  human 
mind  the  thinkers  of  Greece — Socrates,  Plato,  Aristotle, 
to  name  no  more — were  working  at  the  same  problemi 
which  occupied  the  prophets  of  Israel,  and  building  up 
the  rule  of  one  God,  a  Being  supremely  wise  and  good, 
source  of  all  beauty,  and  the  worker  of  all  that  is 
wrought  in  the  universe,  in  place  of  the  many  fickle 
and  weak  deities  who  formerly  bore  sway.  In  many 
ways  the  schools  of  Greece  were  the  forerunners  of 
Christianity.  As  the  Jews,  carried  far  from  their 
temple,  form  a  new  principle  of  religious  association 
and  learn  to  meet  for  the  service  of  God,  without  any 
sacrifice,  in  pious  mental  exercises,  so  the  Greeks,  for 
whom  their  temples  could  do  so  little,  form  little  com- 
munities of  earnest  seekers  after  truth  under  some 
teacher.  The  philosopher's  discourse  is  held  by  students 
of  the  early  Christianity  of  the  West  to  be  the  model 
on  which  the  Christian  sermon  was  formed.  Some  of 
the  schools  even  developed  a  true  pastoral  activity, 
exercising  an  oversight  of  their  members,  and  seeking 
to  mould  their  moral  life  and  habits  according  to  the 
dictates  of  true  wisdom. 

Thus  there  arose  on  Greek  soil,  after  the  temples  had 
grown  cold,  what  may  truly  be  called  a  second  Greek 
religion.  It  took  possession  of  the  Roman  world,  and 
was,  when  Christianity  appeared,  the  prevailing  form  of 
religion  among  the  more  educated.  Both  in  its  outward  // 
forms  of  association,  in  its  doctrine  of  God,  which  went 


304  History  of  Religion  part  iv 

through  later  developments  very  similar  to  those  of 
Judaism,  and  in  its  concentration  of  thought  on  ethical 
problems  and  on  the  moral  life  of  the  individual,  it 
powerfully  prepared  for  Christianity.  It  was  not  a 
religion,  for  it  had  neither  any  historical  root  nor  any 
belief  and  practice  definite  enough  for  the  guidance 
of  the  common  people.  Yet  Christianity  could  not  have 
(^    conquered  the  world  without  it. 

Books  Recommended 

E.  Meyer,  Geschichte  des  Alterthums,  vol.  ii.,  contains  the  first  attempt 
to  deal  with  Greek  religion  in  the  manner  now  required. 

The  Histories  of  Greece  of  Grote,  Curtius,  Abbott,  and  Holm. 

Roscher,  Lexikon  der  griechischen,  a  Rdmischen  Mythologie. 

Dyer,  The  Gods  of  Greece. 

Gardner  and  Jevons,  Manual  of  Greek  Antiquities,  1895. 

L.  R.  Farnell,  The  Cults  of  the  Greek  States,  1896- 1907. 

Nagelsbach,  die  Homerische  Theologie. 

Williamowitz,  Homerische  Untersuchungen. 

G.  Anrich,  das  Antike  Mysterienwesen. 

Rohde,  Psyche,  1891. 

L.  Campbell's  Gifford  Lectures  on  Religion  in  Greek  Literature,  1898. 

E.  Caird,  The  Evolution  of  Theology  in  the  Greek  Philosophers ,  1904. 

Holwerda,  in  De  la  Saussaye,  Third  Edition. 

Ramsay  on  "  Religion  of  Greece  and  Asia  Minor"  in  Hastings'  Bibh 
Dictionary. 

S.  Reinach,  in  Oxford  Proceedings,  vol.  ii.  p.  117,  sqq. 


CHAPTER   XVII 

THE   RELIGION   OF   ROME 

The  Romans  themselves  at  a  certain  period  in  their 
history  identified  their  own  gods  with  those  of  Greece, 
and  borrowed  largely  both  from  Greek  ritual  and  Greek 
mythology,  so  that  they  came  to  the  conclusion  that 
the  Roman  and  the  Greek  religions  were  essentially  the 
same.  To  the  early  Christian  writers  the  religions  of 
Greece  and  Rome  form  one  system  ;  and  the  world  has 
retained  the  impression  that  there  was  one  old  pagan 
religion  which  assumed  certain  local  differences  in  the 
two  countries,  but  was  substantially  the  same  in  both. 

Roman  Religion  was  different  from  Greek. — Now 
the  fact  is  that  while  Greek  religion  conquered  Rome, 
Italy  had  an  older  religion  of  its  own,  which  was  not 
annihilated  by  the  more  brilliant  newcomer,  but  re- 
mained beside  it  and  never  entered  into  entire  fusion 
with  it.  The  Romans  were  not  a  thinking  so  much  as 
an  organising  race ;  in  politics  they  were  far  ahead  of 
the  rest  of  the  world,  but  in  thought  and  imagination 
they  were  children ;  and  so  it  happened  that  they 
borrowed  ideas  and  usages  from  neighbours  on  this 
side  and  on  that,  and  organised  the  whole  into  a  system 
they  could  use,  the  organism  being  their  own,  but  only 
little  of  the  contents. 

We  must  therefore  inquire,  in  the  first  place,  as  to  the 
religion  the  Romans  had  before  they  came  under  the 
influence  of  Greek  ideas.  Their  earliest  religion  is 
to  be  traced  in  the  calendar  of  their  sacred  year,  in 

U  306 


3o6  History  of  Religion  part  iv 

the  lists  of  gods  preserved  for  us  in  the  writings  of 
the  fathers,  and  in  numberless  usages  and  institutions 
descended  from  early  times. 

The  sacred  year  of  early  Rome  is  that  of  an  agri- 
cultural community.  The  festivals  have  to  do  with 
sowing  and  reaping  and  storing  corn,  with  vintage,  with 
flocks  and  herds,  with  wolves,  with  spirits  of  the  woods, 
with  boundaries,  with  fountains,  with  changes  of  the  sun 
and  of  the  moon.  There  are  festivals  of  domestic  life, 
of  the  household  fire,  and  of  the  spirits  of  the  storeroom, 
of  the  spirits  of  the  departed,  and  of  the  household 
ghosts.  There  are  also  festivals  connected  with  warlike 
matters,  some  connected  with  the  river  and  the  harbour 
at  its  mouth,  and  some  having  to  do  with  the  arts  of 
a  simple  population.  The  calendar,  taken  by  itself, 
would  create  the  impression  that  the  community  using 
it  began  with  agriculture  and  added  to  it  afterwards 
various  other  activities ;  there  is  nothing  in  it  to  con- 
tradict the  supposition  that  Roman  religion  had  its 
beginnings  in  the  fields  and  in  the  woods. 

The  earliest  g"ods  of  Rome  also  agree  with  this. 
They  are,  however,  a  very  peculiar  set  of  gods.  Leaving 
the  great  gods  in  the  meantime,  we  notice  two  of  the 
agricultural  deities  ;  there  is  a  Saturnus,  god  of  sowing, 
and  a  Terminus,  god  of  boundaries.  These  are  what 
are  called  functional  deities,  such  as  we  met  with  in 
Greece,  p.  275,  sqq. ;  they  take  their  name  from  the  act 
or  province  over  which  they  preside.  Saturnus  means 
one  who  has  to  do  with  sowing  ;  Terminus  is  a  boundary 
pure  and  simple.  The  god  then,  in  these  examples,  is 
not  a  great  being  who  has  come  to  have  these  functions 
placed  under  him  as  well  as  others.  He  and  the  par- 
ticular function  belong  together ;  he  owes  all  his  deity 
to  it.  Now  these  are  only  examples  ;  the  same  is  found 
to  be  the  case  with  all  or  nearly  all  the  distinctively 
Roman  gods  ;  they  are,  broadly  speaking,  all  functional 
beings.  Each  bears  the  name  of  an  object  or  a  process  ; 
and  on  the  other  hand  there  is  no  object  and  no  act 


CHAP.  XVII  The  Religion  of  Rome  307 

which  has  not  its  god.  It  is  astounding  to  observe  how 
far  the  principle  of  the  division  of  labour  is  carried 
among  these  beings.  Silvanus  is  the  god  of  the  wood, 
Lympha  of  the  stream,  each  wood  and  each  stream 
having  its  own  Silvanus  or  Lympha.  Seia  has  to  do 
with  the  corn  before  it  sprouts,  Segetia  with  corn  when 
shot  up,  Tutilina  with  corn  stored  in  the  granary, 
Nodotus  has  for  his  care  the  knots  in  the  straw.  There 
is  a  god  Door,  a  goddess  Hinge,  a  god  Threshold. 
Each  act  in  opening  infancy  has  its  god  or  goddess. 
The  child  has  Cunina  when  lying  in  the  cradle,  Statina 
when  he  stands,  Edula  when  he  eats,  Locutius  when  he 
begins  to  speak,  Adeona  when  he  makes  for  his  mother, 
Abeona  when  he  leaves  her ;  forty-three  such  gods  of 
childhood  have  been  counted.  Pilumnus,  god  of  the 
pestle,  and  Diverra,  goddess  of  the  broom,  may  close 
our  small  sample  of  the  limitless  crowd. 

It  is  usually  said  about  these  multitudinous  petty 
deities  that  the  Roman  was  very  religious,  and  saw  in 
every  act  and  everything  for  which  he  had  a  name, 
something  mysterious  and  supernatural.  The  Greek, 
it  is  said,  sees  things  on  his  own  level,  and  adds  to 
them  a  god  who  is  human  ;  it  is  by  the  human  spirit 
that  he  interprets  them.  The  Roman,  on  the  contrary, 
sees  things  as  mysteries  and  fills  them  with  gods  who 
are  not  human.  That  is  true ;  but  the  question  to  be 
asked  about  these  Roman  gods  is,  to  what  stage  of 
religious  development  do  they  belong :  do  they  prove 
a  primitive  or  an  advanced  stage  of  religious  thought  ? 
It  has  been  observed  that  these  names  of  gods  are  all 
epithets,  or  adjectives  ;  and  it  has  been  supposed  that 
there  was  originally  a  noun  belonging  to  them,  that 
they  were  all  epithets  of  one  great  deity,  or,  as  some 
are  masculine  and  some  feminine,  of  a  great  male  and 
a  great  female  deity.  The  noun  fell  out  of  use,  it  is 
supposed,  but  was  still  present  to  the  mind  of  the 
Roman,  and  thus  his  regiments  of  divine  names  are 
not  really  designations  of  different  persons,  but  titles 


3o8  History  of  Religion  part  iv 

of  the  same  person,  supposed  to  be  present  alike  in 
all  these  numberless  manifestations.  But  it  is  not  easy 
to  conceive  how,  if  primitive  Italy  had  reached  the 
conception  of  the  unity  of  deity,  that  deity  became  so 
remarkably  subdivided,  nor  how  his  own  proper  name 
and  character  were  lost.  It  is  much  more  natural  to 
suppose  that  the  petty  gods  of  Rome  were  all  the 
deities  the  early  Latins  had,  and  were  worshipped  for 
their  own  sake.  They  represent  the  stage  of  thought 
called  Animism  (see  p.  41)  when  every  part  of  nature  is 
thought  to  have  its  spirit,  and  the  number  of  invisible 
beings  is  liable  to  be  multiplied  indefinitely.  While 
other  Aryan  races  had  passed  beyond  this  stage  when 
we  first  know  them,  and  advanced  to  the  belief  in 
great  gods  ruling  great  provinces  of  nature,  the  Latins, 
whose  mind  was  organising  rather  than  productive, 
made  this  advance  more  slowly,  and  instead  of  making 
it  organised  the  spiritual  world  of  animism  with  a 
thoroughness  nowhere  else  equalled.^  They  had,  there- 
fore, no  gods  properly  so  called,  but  only  a  host  of 
spirits.  Even  the  beings  they  possessed,  who  after- 
wards became  great  gods,  were  at  first  no  more  than 
functional  spirits.  Janus,  afterwards  one  of  the  chief 
deities  of  Rome,  is  originally  the  "spirit  of  opening"; 
an  abstraction  capable  of  great  multiplication;  a  Janus 
could  be  invoked  for  each  act  of  that  kind.  Vesta  is 
the  spirit  of  the  hearth  ;  each  household  had  its  Vesta, 
both  in  early  and  in  later  times.  Juno  is  not  one  but 
many :  as  each  man  had  his  genius,  a  spiritual  self 
accompanying  or  guarding  him,  so  each  woman  had 
—  not  her  genius,  but  her  Juno.  There  were  many 
Vestas,  many  Junos ;  and  it  is  only  later  that  the 
great  goddess  arises,  who  may  be  looked  to  from 
every  quarter.  Others  of  the  great  gods  of  later  Rome 
have  a  similar  early  history.  Mars  was  at  first  the 
spirit  which   made  the  corn  grow ;  Diana  was  a  tree- 

^    See  on  this    Mr.    Jevons's   preface   to  Plutarch's  Romane    Questions 
(Nutt,  1892);  which  deserves  to  be  published  in  a  more  accessible  form. 


CHAP.  XVII  The  Religion  of  Rome  309 

spirit,  Jovis  or  Diovis  himself,  though  his  name  con- 
nects him  with  the  Greek  Zeus  and  the  Sanscrit  Dyaus, 
and  though  he  is  afterwards,  like  these,  the  god  of  the 
sky,  was  originally  in  Latin  a  spirit  of  wine,  and  was 
worshipped,  the  Jovis  of  each  village  or  each  farm,  at 
the  wine-feast  in  April  when  the  first  cask  was 
broached.  Thus  the  gods  of  the  Latins  are  not  beings 
who  have  an  independent  existence  and  features  of 
their  own ;  they  are  limited  each  to  the  particular 
object  or  process  from  which  he  derives  his  character, 
and  have  no  realm  beyond  it.  And  the  same  is  true 
of  the  family  and  house-gods,  whose  worship  formed 
perhaps  the  principal  part  of  the  working  religion 
of  the  Roman.  The  Lares  represent  the  departed 
ancestors  of  the  family ;  they  dwell  near  the  spot  in 
the  house  where  they  were  buried,  and  still  preside 
over  the  household  as  they  did  in  life.  They  are 
worshipped  daily  with  prayers  and  offerings  of  food 
and  drink  ;  the  family  adore  in  them  not  so  much  the 
dead  individuals,  though  their  masks  hang  on  the 
wall,  as  the  abstraction  of  its  own  family  continuity. 
The  Penates  or  spirits  of  the  store-chamber  are  wor- 
shipped along  with  the  Lares,  they  represent  the  con- 
tinuity of  the  family  fortune.  A  more  general  name 
for  the  departed  is  the  Manes,  the  kind  ones ;  they 
are  thought  of  as  living  below  the  earth  ;  it  is  not 
individuals  who  are  worshipped  at  their  festivals,  but 
the  dead  in  the  abstract,  the  former  upholders  of  the 
family  or  of  the  people. 

The  character  of  Roman  worship  is  determined  by 
the  nature  of  its  objects.  As  each  of  the  gods  has 
his  basis  in  a  material  object  or  action,  there  can  be 
no  need  of  any  images  of  them  ;  where  the  object  or 
the  act  is,  there  is  the  god,  his  character  is  expressed 
in  it  and  not  to  be  expressed  otherwise.  Nor  could 
such  gods  require  any  temples.  And  what  need  of 
priests  for  them,  when  every  one  who  knew  their 
names  (a  great  deal   depended   on   that)  could   place 


3IO  History  of  Religion  part  iv 

himself  in  contact  with  them  as  soon  as  he  saw  the 
object  or  took  in  hand  the  action  behind  which  they 
stood?  Nor  can  many  stories  be  told  about  gods 
like  these,  —  the  Romans  have  no  mythology.  The 
beings  they  worship  are  not  persons  but  abstractions. 
They  have  just  enough  character  to  be  male  or  female, 
but  they  cannot  move  about  or  act  independently  of 
their  natural  basis ;  they  cannot  marry,  nor  breed 
scandal,  nor  make  war.  Nor  can  there  be  any  motive 
for  identifying  with  such  beings  a  great  man  who 
has  died  ;  where  there  are  no  true  gods,  there  cannot 
be  any  demi  -  gods  or  heroes.  Only  a  very  limited 
power  can  possibly  be  put  forth  by  such  beings  ;  all 
they  can  do  is  to  give  or  to  withhold  prosperity, 
each  in  the  narrow  section  of  affairs  he  has  to  do 
with. 

The  aim  of  worship  where  such  a  set  of  beings  is 
concerned,  is  to  get  hold  of  the  spirit  or  god  connected 
with  the  act  one  has  in  view,  and  so  to  deal  with  him 
as  to  avert  his  disfavour,  which  the  Roman  always 
apprehended,  and  gain  his  concurrence.  The  house- 
gods  are  beings  possessing  a  stated  cult,  but  outside 
the  house-cult  the  worshipper  has  to  face  the  question 
at  each  emergency  which  god  he  ought  to  address. 
He  might  choose  the  wrong  one,  which  would  make 
his  act  of  worship  vain.  If  he  names  the  god  correctly 
he  will  have  a  hold  on  him  ;  in  a  case  of  uncertainty, 
therefore,  he  names  a  number  of  gods,  in  the  hope  that 
one  of  them  will  be  the  right  one  ;  or  he  invokes  them 
all.  "  Whether  thou  be  god  or  goddess  "  he  will  further 
say,  if  he  is  in  doubt  on  that  point,  "or  by  whatever 
name  thou  desirest  to  be  called."  Each  god  has  his 
proper  style  and  title,  and  it  is  vain  to  approach  him 
without  these  ;  lists  of  the  various  gods  and  of  their 
correct  styles  were  therefore  drawn  up  in  very  early 
times  to  serve  as  guides  to  the  subject.  The  Latin 
word  "indigito,"  to  point  out,  from  "digitus,"  a  finger, 
is  the  term  used  of  addressing  a  god  ;  the  lists  of  deities 


CHAP.  XVII  The  Religio7i  of  Rome  3  t  i 

with  their  proper  appellations  were  called  "indigita- 
menta"  ;  and  the  gods  named  in  them  "  Dii  indigetes." 
The  act  of  worship  is  grave  and  formal ;  it  has  to  be 
done  with  precision  and  in  strict  accordance  with  the 
rules;  silence  is  commanded;  the  sacrificer  repeats  the 
prayer  proper  for  the  occasion  after  some  one  who 
knows  it  by  rote ;  the  worshippers  veil  their  heads. 
In  this  the  Roman  ritual  is  markedly  different  from 
the  Greek.  Mommsen  says  the  Greek  prayed  bare- 
headed, because  his  prayer  was  contemplation,  looking 
at  and  to  the  gods  ;  and  the  Roman  with  head  covered, 
because  his  prayer  was  an  exercise  of  thought ;  and  in 
this  he  sees  a  characteristic  indication  of  the  difference 
between  the  two  religions.  A  more  modern  interpreta- 
tion of  the  Roman  practice  is  that  it  arose  from  the  fear 
that  the  worshipper  might  see  the  god  whom  he  has 
just  summoned  by  name,  which  would  be  dangerous. 
If  any  mistake  is  made  in  worship,  the  act  is  vain  and 
has  to  be  done  over  again. 

The  Great  Gods. — The  foregoing  is  the  logic  of  the 
system  on  which  the  Roman  religion,  as  distinguished 
from  the  foreign  elements  afterwards  added  to  it,  was 
based  ;  the  religion,  however,  does  not  come  into  view 
historically  till  it  has  begun  to  rise  above  such  a 
worship  of  abstractions  or  of  petty  spirits,  towards  a 
worship  of  gods.  It  was  apparently  by  the  growth  of 
larger  social  organisms  that  the  Latin  tribes  advanced 
to  the  worship  of  greater  gods.  While  the  family 
religions  continued  to  the  end,  the  tribe  had,  as  in  the 
case  of  other  early  peoples,  a  larger  religion  than  the 
family,  and  a  union  of  tribes  produced  a  religion  on  a 
still  greater  scale.  The  history  of  early  Rome  consists 
of  a  succession  of  such  fusions  of  tribes  into  a  larger 
political  whole.  When  history  opens,  "  Rome  is  a  fully- 
formed  and  united  city "  ;  but  Rome  is  made  up  of 
several  tribes,  which  maintain  many  separate  institu- 
tions. The  religion  of  after  times  bears  witness  to 
these   successive   unions.      "  Deus    Fidius,"  the  god  of 


312  History  of  Religion  part  iv 

good  faith,  is  the  sacred  impersonation  of  an  alliance. 
Mars  and  Quirinus  are  precisely  similar  to  each  other, 
and  each  has  a  flamen,  or  blower  of  the  sacrificial  flame, 
and  a  staff  of  twelve  salii  or  dancers.  Mars  is  the 
Roman,  Quirinus  the  Sabine  deity;  and  we  see  that 
the  two  tribes  had,  before  they  were  united,  very  similar 
worships,  which  were  both  kept  up  after  the  union. 
The  feriae  Latinae,  or  Latin  festival,  celebrated  on 
Mons  Albanus,  is  common  to  the  Latin  tribes  and 
commemorates  their  union.  Jovis  rises  into  importance 
with  the  growth  of  city  life ;  he  comes  to  be  called 
father  Jovis,  Jupiter ;  there  are  many  Jupiters,  but  the 
Jupiter  of  the  city  of  Rome  is  the  greatest  and  best  of 
all ;  he  bears  the  title  of  Optimus  Maximus.  He  rises 
above  Mars,  in  earlier  times  the  first  Roman  god,  after 
whom  the  first  month  of  the  year  was  called,  before 
the  month  of  Janus  and  the  month  of  Februus,  the 
purifier,  were  added  to  it.  Janus,  the  great  state-god 
of  opening,  was  the  only  one  of  whom  there  was  a 
representation ;  Mars  was  represented  symbolically  by 
a  spear,  but  Janus  was  figured  as  a  man  with  two  faces. 
Vesta,  the  hearth-goddess  of  the  state,  was  of  course  a 
great  deity  with  a  very  important  worship. 

Here  we  must  mention  a  side  of  Roman  religion 
which  no  doubt  has  its  roots  far  back  in  prehistoric 
darkness,  but  which  could  scarcely  be  organised  as  we 
find  it  till  the  greater  gods  had  risen  to  some  degree  of 
power.  It  was  believed  that  the  gods  were  constantly 
making  signs  to  men,  especially  in  occurrences  which 
take  place  in  the  air,  such  as  thunder  and  lightning,  and 
the  flight  of  birds,  but  also  in  many  other  ways.  Some 
of  the  signs  were  simple,  so  that  any  one  could  tell  if 
they  were  lucky  or  the  reverse,  but  some  were  not  to  be 
interpreted  except  by  men  possessing  a  special  know- 
ledge of  the  subject.  And  such  men  might  be  asked 
by  an  individual  or  by  the  state  when  about  to  enter 
on  any  undertaking,  to  seek  a  sign  from  heaven  con- 
cerning that  business.     This  became  with  the  Romans 


CHAP.  XVII  The  Religion  of  Rome  313 

a  great  and  important  act,  and  those  who  had  it  in  their 
hands  exercised  great  power. 

Sacred  Persons. — The  priest  in  the  earliest  times  was, 
in  the  domestic  reh'gion,  the  paterfamilias,  in  that  of 
the  tribe,  which  was  but  an  extended  household,  the 
head  of  the  leading  family,  and  in  the  city,  which  was 
constituted  after  the  same  model,  the  king.  Religion 
was  the  principal  part  of  the  service  of  the  state ;  the 
king  as  such  had  to  offer  sacrifice,  to  cause  the  gods 
to  be  consulted,  to  prosecute  and  judge  and  punish 
those  who  had  violated  the  laws  and  came  under  the 
anger  of  the  gods.  But  as  the  state  grew  larger,  various 
offices  were  set  up  to  relieve  the  king  of  part  of  these 
duties ;  when  new  worships  were  added  to  the  old  ones, 
the  care  of  them  was  in  some  cases  committed  to  a 
special  person  or  college;  and  these  priesthoods  and 
sacred  guilds  of  early  Rome  maintained  their  place  in 
the  constitution  for  many  centuries,  and  carried  on  this 
part  of  the  public  service  long  after  the  words  they 
spoke  and  the  acts  they  did  had  become  meaningless. 
Beginning  with  the  sacred  persons  attached  to  special 
cults,  we  have,  first,  three  flamens,  one  of  Mars,  one  of 
Ouirinus,  and  one  of  Jovis  (fl.  Martialis,  Quirinalis, 
Dialis).  Mars  and  Quirinus  have  their  dancers,  as  we 
mentioned  above.  Other  flamens  of  lower  rank  were 
afterwards  instituted  for  the  separate  worships  of  the 
tribes.  Very  old  are  the  "  fratres  arvales,"  field-brothers, 
who  served  the  creative  goddess  (Dea  Dia)  in  the 
country  in  the  month  of  May,  with  a  view  to  a  good 
growing  summer,  dancing  to  her  and  addressing  hymns 
to  her  which  m.ay  be  read  now  but  cannot  be  under- 
stood, and  were  unintelligible  to  the  Romans  themselves. 
The  Luperci  (wolf-men)  held  a  shepherd's  festival  in 
the  month  of  February,  sacrificing  goats  and  dogs  to 
some  rustic  deity,  and  running  naked  through  the 
streets  afterwards,  striking  those  they  met  with  thongs 
cut  from  the  hides  of  the  victims.  The  six  vestal 
virgins  are  well  known,  who  had  charge  of  keeping  up 


314  History  of  Religion  part  iv 

the  fire  of  Vesta,  the   house  fire  of  the   state.     They 
devoted   their  whole  lives  to  this  office,  and    enjoyed 
great    respect.      These    priesthoods   and    corporations, 
instituted  to  secure  the  continuance  of  special  cults,  are 
not  of  a  nature  to   bring   the  whole  of  life  under  the 
influence  of  the  priests  and  so  to  foster  a  priestly  type 
of  religion.     Nor  were  those  other  religious  offices  of 
a  nature  to  do  so,  which  were  not  attached  to  special 
cults  but  served  the  more  general  purpose  of  assisting 
and  advising  the  state  in  matters  connected  with  religion. 
First  among  these  comes  the  office  of  pontifex,  a  word 
which  is  variously  interpreted,  either  as  "  bridge-maker," 
— that  being   a  very  important   and   solemn   proceed- 
ing,— or  as  leader  in  a  religious  procession.     There  were 
originally  five    pontifices,  and    the   number  was   after- 
wards raised  to  fifteen.     They  exercised  a  great  variety 
of  functions,  and  had  a  general  oversight  of  all  religious 
matters,  both  public  and  domestic.     They  were  experts 
in  ritual  and  in  canon  law ;  they  advised  the  state  as 
to  the  proper  sacrifices  to  be  offered  for  the  public,  and, 
when  consulted,  would  also  direct  the  private  individual. 
Funerals,    marriages,   and    other    domestic    occurrences 
into  which  religious  considerations  entered,  were  under 
their   charge ;    and  on  the  occurrence  of  portents  and 
omens  it  was  their   duty  to   indicate  the  steps  to  be 
taken  in  order  to  find  out  what  the  gods  wished  to 
signify.     They  had  charge  of  the  calendar,  and  had  to 
fix  what  days  were  proper  for  carrying  on  the  business 
of  the  courts  {dies  fasti),  and  they  were  the  authorities 
on   the   forms  of  legal    process.     The   chief  pontiff  is 
called    the   "judge   and   arbiter   of    things  divine   and 
human,"  and  the  college  had  manifestly  a  very  strong 
position.     The  same  is  true  of  the  augurs  or  experts  in 
signs  and  omens.      Though  they  did  not  consult  the 
gods  about  public  undertakings  until  the  magistrate  or 
the  general  asked  them  to  do  so,  they  had  power  to 
stop  proceedings  of  which  they  disapproved ;  and  this 
at  certain  periods  of  Roman  history  they  very  frequently 


CHAP.  XVII  The  Religion  of  Rome  315 

did.  In  Cicero's  treatise  on  Divination  a  great  deal 
of  interesting  matter  may  be  found  on  this  subject. 
Another  sacred  college  of  somewhat  later  date  is  that 
of  the  men,  at  first  three  in  number,  afterwards  fifteen, 
who  acted  as  expounders  of  the  sacred  Sibylline  books, 
which  King  Tarquin  purchased  from  the  old  woman  or 
Sibyl,  of  Cumae. 

Roman  Religion  Legal  rather  than  Priestly. — While 
some  of  these  priestly  colleges  exercised  large  powers, 
these  powers  were  always  regarded  not  as  inherent  but 
deputed.  The  sacred  offices  were  not  hereditary  but 
elective ;  no  course  of  training  was  necessary  to  qualify 
for  them  ;  men  were  chosen  for  them  by  the  state  as  for 
any  other  public  office,  and  those  who  became  priests 
did  not  cease  to  be  citizens  but  continued  to  sit  in  the 
Senate,  and,  as  it  might  happen,  to  hold  other  offices 
at  the  same  time.  The  growth  of  a  priestly  caste  was 
thus  effectively  prevented  ;  religion  was  precluded  from 
having  any  free  development  of  its  own,  and  kept  in  the 
position  of  an  instrument  for  the  furtherance  of  ends  of 
state.  There  is  no  great  religion  in  which  ritual  is  so 
much,  doctrine  and  enthusiasm  so  little.  All  these 
priests  and  colleges  exist  for  no  end  but  to  carry  out 
with  strict  exactitude  the  ritual  usage  which  is  deemed 
necessary  to  keep  on  good  terms  with  the  gods.  They 
have  no  doctrine  to  teach,  no  fervour  to  communicate, 
they  df  not  even  tell  any  stories.  Punctiliousness  and 
anxiety  attend  all  their  proceedings.  To  the  Roman, 
Ihne  says,  "religion  turns  out  to  be  the  fear  lest  the 
gods  should  punish  them  for  neglect ;  any  unusual 
occurrence  may  be  a  sign  that  the  gods  are  withdrawing 
their  co-operation  from  the  state,  and  this  must  be 
looked  into,  and  the  due  expiations  used  if  judged 
necessary."  Ritual  must  always  be  carried  out  with 
the  utmost  precision ;  it  is  not  the  goodwill  of  the 
worshipper  but  his  exactitude  that  counts.  He  may 
even  cheat  the  gods  of  their  due  if  he  is  formally 
correct  in  his  observance.     For  example,  if  the  auspices 


3i6  History  of  Religion  part  iv 

(the  signs  derived  from  birds)  were  unfavourable,  they 
could  be  repeated  till  a  better  result  was  obtained. 

What  we  have  described  is  the  religion  of  Rome  in 
its  original  form,  before  it  accepted  foreign  modifications. 
Its  gods  are  spirits  of  the  woods  and  fields,  of  the 
market,  of  the  foray,  of  the  treaty,  of  all  the  aspects, 
in  fact,  which  life  had  borne  to  the  tribes  of  Central  Italy, 
especially  to  the  Latins  and  the  Sabines  who  combined 
to  form  the  state  of  Rome.  These  gods  form  no  family 
and  have  no  history,  they  do  not,  like  the  gods  of 
Greece,  lay  hold  of  the  imagination,  nor,  like  those 
of  Germany,  of  the  affections.  They  are  only  dimly 
known  ;  but  they  are  powerful,  and  it  is  necessary  to 
reckon  with  them  ;  and  the  only  relations  which  can 
be  kept  up  with  such  beings  are  those  of  business  and 
of  law.  It  follows  that  this  religion  is  one  of  constraint 
and  not  of  inspiration.  In  this  it  agrees  with  the 
Roman  character,  which  is  much  more  inclined  to  order 
than  to  freedom,  to  law  than  to  art.  The  word  religion 
has  here  its  origin ;  its  primary  meaning  is  restraint  or 
check,  since  the  chief  feeling  with  which  the  Roman 
regarded  his  gods  was  that  of  anxiety.  Not  that  the 
gods  were  bad  ;  Vediovis,  the  bad  counterpart  of  Jovis, 
is  a  vanishing  figure, — but  they  were  ill-known,  and 
might  have  cause  to  be  angry.  Worship,  therefore, 
the  practical  cultivation  of  the  friendship  of  the  gods, 
swallows  up  here  the  other  elements  of  religiofl  as  a 
whole.  Religion  does  not  free  the  forces  of  human 
nature  to  realise  themselves  in  spontaneous  activity, 
but  enchains  them  to  the  punctilious  service  of  a  non- 
human  authority.  Everything  exciting  is  kept  at  a 
distance,  and  men  are  trained  in  obedience  and  scrupu- 
lousness and  self-denial.  They  produce  no  beautiful 
works  of  art,  and  have  hardly  any  stories  to  delight 
in  ;  but  they  are  reverent  and  conscientious  ;  private 
feeling  is  sacrificed  with  an  austere  satisfaction  to  the 
public  interest,  and  they  accordingly  build  up  a  great 
power.       Living   in   an    atmosphere   of  magic,   where 


CHAP.  XVII  The  Religion  of  Rome  317 

unseen  dangers  lurk  on  every  side,  and  there  is  virtue 
in  words  and  forms  correctly  used  to  avert  these 
dangers,  the  Roman  develops  to  perfection  one  side 
of  religion.  To  its  inspirations  and  enthusiasms  and 
hidden  consolation  he  is  a  stranger ;  but  he  knows 
it  better  than  others  as  a  conservative  and  regulating 
force,  which  checks  passion,  calls  for  wary  and  orderly 
conduct,  and  causes  the  individual  to  subordinate 
himself  to  the  community. 

Changes  introduced  from  without.  —  The  Roman 
religion  had,  properly  speaking,  no  development.  What 
it  might  have  become  had  it  been  left  to  unfold  itself 
without  interference  from  without,  we  can  only  guess ; 
but  it  was  early  brought  under  the  influence  of  more 
highly  developed  religions,  and  it  proved  to  have  so 
little  power  of  resisting  innovations  that  it  speedily 
parted  with  much  of  its  own  native  character.  The 
Romans  were  not  unconscious  that  their  religion  was 
an  imperfect  one ;  they  never  claimed,  when  they  were 
conquering  the  world,  that  their  religion  was  the  only 
true  one,  or  had  any  mission  to  prevail  over  others. 
They  were  tolerant  from  the  first  of  the  religions  of 
other  peoples.  The  gods  of  other  peoples  they  always 
believed  to  be  real  beings,  with  whom  it  was  well  for 
them  also  to  be  on  good  terms.  If  everything  in  the 
world  had  its  spirit,  these  gods  also  were  the  spirits 
of  their  own  countries  and  nations ;  the  very  notion 
of  deity  which  the  Romans  entertained  prevented  them 
from  having  any  exclusive  belief  in  their  own  gods  or 
from  denying  the  right  of  the  gods  of  others.^  When 
therefore  they  came  in  contact  with  foreign  religions, 
they  were  not  protected  by  any  profound  conviction 
of  the  truth  of  their  own,  and  were  exposed  to  the 
full  force  of  the  new  ideas.  The  new  religions  came 
to  them  along  with  the  culture  of  peoples  much  further 
advanced  in  art  and  in  thought  than  they  were  them- 
selves ;  at  each  such  contact,  therefore,  they  felt  the 
^  Cf.  Celsus  in  Origen,  Contra  Celsuiii,  vii.  68. 


3i8  History  of  Religion  part  iv 

foreigner  to  be  superior  to  themselves  in  intellectual 
matters ;  and  wherever  this  happens,  the  less  highly 
gifted  race  is  likely  to  change  in  its  religion  as  well  as  in 
other  things.  We  have  to  note  the  changes  which  were 
produced  by  such  external  influences. 

In  the  first  place,  Rome  borrowed  from  Etruria. 
Etruscan  religion  was  both  more  developed  and  more 
savage  than  that  of  Rome.  Human  sacrifice  was  an 
acknowledged  feature  of  it ;  divination  was  carried  to 
absurd  lengths,  one  great  branch  of  it  consisting  in 
the  prediction  of  the  future  from  the  appearance  of  the 
entrails  of  slaughtered  animals.  Etruria  had  a  hell  with 
regular  torments  for  the  departed ;  in  Rome  the  belief 
in  a  future  life  was  much  less  definite.  On  the  other 
hand,  Etruria  had  deities  who  were  something  more 
than  abstractions ;  there  was  a  circle  of  twelve  gods, 
who  held  meetings  on  high,  and  regulated  the  affairs 
of  the  world.  Above  them  was  a  power,  little  defined, 
to  which  the  gods  were  subject,  a  kind  of  fate.  Greek 
influence,  so  notably  apparent  in  Etruscan  art,  is  present, 
too,  we  see,  in  Etruscan  religion ;  it  is  through  this 
somewhat  dark  passage  that  Greek  religious  ideas  first 
came  to  Rome.  Under  this  influence  various  innova- 
tions took  place  at  Rome.  Before  the  end  of  the 
monarchy  the  Romans  had  begun  to  build  houses  for 
their  gods,  after  being  for  170  years,  we  are  told,  with- 
out any  such  arrangement.  The  Roman  "templum" 
was  not  originally  a  building,  but  a  space  marked 
off,  according  to  the  rules  of  augury,  for  the  observa- 
tion of  signs,  A  part  of  the  sky  was  also  marked  off 
for  such  "  observation  "  and  "  contemplation."  On  such  a 
holy  site,  on  the  Capitoline  hill,  there  was  founded  by 
the  earlier  Tarquin  the  temple  of  Jupiter  which  always 
continued  to  be  the  principal  site  of  Roman  religion. 
Its  architecture  was  Tuscan ;  and  it  contained  not 
only  a  cella  or  holy  place  for  the  image  of  Jupiter 
Optimus  Maximus,  but  also  a  cella  for  Juno  and  one 
for  Minerva.     The  latter  was  both  an  Etruscan  and  a 


CHAP.  XVII  The  Religion  of  Rome  319 

Roman  deity,  the  goddess  of  memory.  Art  was  thus 
enlisted  in  the  service  of  the  gods  ;  the  divine  figures 
acquired  a  reality  and  distinctness  quite  wanting  to  the 
earlier  divine  abstractions ;  and  a  new  notion  of  deity 
was  presented  to  the  Roman  mind.  Other  temples 
followed,  to  Jupiter  under  other  names  than  that  which 
he  had  in  the  Capitol,  and  to  other  deities.  That  of 
Faith  was  a  very  early  one.  It  was  a  rule  in  temple- 
building  that  the  image  in  the  cella  faced  the  west,  \/ 
so  that  the  worshipper,  praying  towards  it,  faced  the 
east.  Here  also  the  Roman  custom  is  a  departure  from 
the  Greek  ;  for  in  Greek  temples  it  is  the  rule  that  the 
image  faces  the  east,  and  the  worshipper  the  west. 
The  Roman  orientation  of  sacred  buildings  has  passed 
into  the  practice  of  the  Christian  Church.  From  Etruria 
the  Romans  also  derived  a  great  addition  to  the  rules 
of  divination  ;  but  the  more  childish  parts  of  Etruscan 
divination  were  regarded  at  Rome  as  superstitious, 
though  private  persons  might  frequently  resort  to  them. 
Greek  Gods  in  Rome. — While  Greek  ideas  thus  came 
indirectly  from  the  north,  the  south  of  the  peninsula 
was  becoming  more  and  more  Greek,  and  the  gods  and 
temples  of  Hellas,  established  first  at  the  sea-ports  and 
colonies,  gradually  came  to  Rome.  This  movement  is 
connected  with  the  Sibylline  books  which  were  acquired 
by  the  last  of  the  kings.  These  books  were  brought 
to  Rome  from  the  Greek  town  of  Cumae ;  they  were 
written  in  Greek,  and  contained  oracles  which  were 
ascribed  to  an  old  Greek  prophetess.  They  were  con- 
sulted in  grave  emergencies  of  state  through  the  officials 
who  had  charge  of  them,  and  what  they  generally  pre- 
scribed was  that  a  god  should  be  sent  for  from  Greece, 
and  his  worship  set  up  in  Rome.  Many  foreign 
worships  were  thus  imported.  First  came  Apollo, 
disguised  under  the  Latin  name  of  Aperta,  "opener," 
for'  the  books  contained  many  of  his  oracles  ;  he  was 
received  and  worshipped  as  a  god  of  purification,  since 
the  state  was  in  need  of  that  process  at  the  time,  as 


320  History  of  Religion  part  iv 

well  as  of  prophecy.  In  the  year  496  B.C.  came  in 
the  same  way  Demeter,  Persephone,  and  Dionysus, 
identified  with  the  old  Latin  Ceres,  Libera,  and  Liber  ; 
and,  a  century  later,  Heracles,  identified  with  the  Latin 
Hercules.  In  the  year  291,  on  the  occurrence  of  a 
plague,  Asclepios,  in  Latin  Aesculapius,  was  brought 
from  Epidauros  ;  and  when  the  crisis  of  the  contest 
with  Hannibal  was  at  hand  (204  B.C.)  Cybele,  the  great 
mother  of  the  gods,  was  fetched  from  Pessinus  in 
Phrygia.  The  people  of  that  town  generously  handed 
over  to  the  Roman  ambassadors  the  field-stone  which 
was  their  image  of  the  goddess,  and  her  journey  to 
Rome  had  the  desired  effect,  in  the  expulsion  of 
Hannibal  from  Italy.  The  Venus  of  Mount  Eryx  in 
Sicily  arrived  in  Rome  about  the  same  time ;  a  goddess 
combining  the  characters  of  Aphrodite  and  Astarte, 
and  quite  different  from  the  simple  old  Roman  Venus, 
who    was    a    goddess    of    Spring,    and    presided    over 


gardens. 


The  process  of  which  these  are  the  outward  land- 
marks went  on  during  the  whole  period  of  the  Republic, 
and  resulted  in  the  substitution  of  what  may  be  called 
with  Mommsen  the  Grzeco-Roman,  for  the  old  Roman 
religion.  The  change  was  a  very  profound  one.  Not 
only  were  some  new  gods  added  to  the  old  ones,  not 
only  did  Greek  art  come  to  be  employed  in  Roman 
temples,  not  only  were  new  rites  introduced,  such  as 
the  lectisternium,  in  which  couches  were  arranged,  each 
with  the  image  of  a  god  and  that  of  a  goddess,  and 
tables  spread  to  regale  the  recumbent  deities.  The 
very  notion  of  deity  was  changed ;  the  Greek  god, 
represented  by  an  image  in  human  form  and  moving 
freely  in  the  upper  world,  was  substituted  for  the  Latin 
god  who  was  the  unseen  side  of  an  act  or  process  or 
quality,  from  which  he  had  his  name,  and  apart  from 
which  he  was  not  The  following  is  a  list  of  the 
principal  Roman  gods  and  of  the  Greek  ones  with 
whom    they    were    identified :-- Jupiter    (Zeus),    Juno 


CHAP.  XVII  The  Religion  of  Rome  321 

(Hera),  Neptunus  (Poseidon),  Minerva  (Athene),  Mars 
(Ares),  Venus  (Aphrodite),  Diana  (Artemis),  Vulcanus 
(Hephaestus),  Vesta  (Hestia),  Mercurius  (Hermes), 
Ceres  (Demeter).  The  identifications  are  by  no  means 
accurate ;  Jupiter  and  Vesta,  as  we  have  seen,  are  the 
only  two  Roman  gods  who  are  really  identical  with 
Greek  gods,  the  other  equations  are  founded  on 
accidental  resemblances,  and  are  more  arbitrary  than 
real.  The  result  of  them  was,  however,  that  the 
Romans  forgot  to  a  large  extent  their  own  gods,  and 
got  Greek  ones  instead.  With  the  divine  figures  they 
took  over  the  mythology  of  Greece,  and  thus  the  gods 
came  to  be  well  known  with  all  their  weaknesses, 
instead  of  as  before  surrounded  with  mystery  and  awe. 
The  worship  founded  on  the  earlier  conception  of  the 
deity,  and  kept  up  with  unwavering  regularity,  was 
inapplicable  to  these  new  gods,  and  inevitably  lost  all 
its  reality.  This  is  not  the  only  cause,  but  it  is  one 
of  the  chief  causes  which  prepared  for  the  fearful 
spectacle  presented  by  Roman  religion  at  the  end  of 
the  Republic,  when  men  of  learning  and  distinction 
officiated  as  the  heads  of  a  religion  in  which  they  had 
no  belief,  and  which  they  scoffed  at  in  their  writings. 

Among  the  worships  which  came  to  Rome  from  the 
East  there  were  several  which  are  not  of  Greek,  but 
of  Oriental  origin.  The  worship  of  Cybele  belongs  to 
Asia  Minor,  though  it  had  spread  over  Greece ;  that 
of  Dionysus  also  came  to  Greece  from  Asia.  The 
practice  of  both  these  cults  was  accompanied  by  ex- 
citement and  self-abandonment  on  the  part  of  the 
worshippers ;  and  they  formed  a  great  contrast  to  the 
staid  and  formal  worship  of  the  Romans,  the  only 
admissible  passion  in  which  was  a  calm  passion  for 
correctness.  The  worship  of  Cybele  was  carried  on  by 
eunuchs,  it  had  noisy  processions,  and  depended  on 
begging  for  its  support.  When  the  Romans  brought  it 
to  their  city,  they  ordained  that  Roman  citizens  should 
not  fill  leading  offices  in  it ;  but  it  flourished  so  strongly, 

X 


32  2  History  of  Religion  part  iv 

among  the  numerous  foreigners  in  the  capital  and  among 
the  poor,  as  to  show  that  it  met  a  great  want  there. 
The  worship  of  Bacchus  had  to  be  suppressed  by  the 
state ;  it  was  carried  on  at  nocturnal  meetings,  which 
even  citizens  attended,  and  it  led  to  all  kinds  of  irregu- 
larities. As  the  subject  of  this  chapter  is  not  the 
religions  of  Rome,  but  the  Roman  religion,  we  do  not 
here  review  the  numerous  foreign  worships  which  were 
brought  to  the  capital  from  every  part  of  the  Empire, 
and  made  Rome,  towards  the  close  of  the  Republic,  the 
residence  of  the  gods  of  every  nation.  The  Romans  as 
we  saw  were  not  led  by  any  convictions  of  their  own 
to  deny  the  truth  of  foreign  religions  ;  and  their  policy 
as  rulers  also  inclined  them  to  tolerate  all  worships  which 
did  not  offend  against  civil  order.  In  the  provinces  it 
was  the  rule  not  to  interfere  with  local  religion  ;  at 
Rome  the  authorities  recognised  not  the  imported 
religion  itself,  of  which  the  state  did  not  feel  called  to 
judge,  but  the  association  practising  it,  which  received 
permission  to  do  so.  The  worship  was  then  protected 
by  the  state — it  became  a  religio  licita.  Amid  the 
meeting  of  all  the  gods  and  the  clashing  of  all  the 
creeds  which  were  thus  brought  about  at  Rome,  the 
Roman  religion  itself  maintained  its  place,  not  as  a 
doctrine  which  any  one  believed,  for  the  very  priests 
and  augurs  laughed  at  the  rites  and  ceremonies  they 
carried  on,  but  as  a  ritual  which  was  bound  up  with 
the  whole  past  history  of  Rome,  and  believed  to  be 
necessary  for  the  welfare  of  the  state  as  well  as  for  the 
satisfaction  of  the  common  people.  In  the  atmosphere 
of  discussion  and  of  far-reaching  scepticism  which  then 
prevailed  it  was  not  to  be  expected  that  faith  could 
again  find  any  strong  support  in  the  historical  religion 
of  Rome.  The  Emperor  Augustus  made  a  serious 
attempt  to  reform  and  revive  religion.  He  selected 
the  domestic  worship  of  the  Lares  as  the  most  living 
part  of  the  old  system,  and  ordained  that  the  two 
Lares   should   be   worshipped    along  with  the   genius 


CHAP.  XVII  The  Religion  of  Roine  323 

of  the  Emperor,  and  that  Rome  should  be  divided  into 
districts,  each  with  its  temple  of  this  strange  trinity; 
while  in  the  provinces  each  district  was  to  support  a 
worship  of  Rome  and  of  the  Emperor  in  addition  to 
its  existing  cults.  Temples  were  rebuilt  at  Rome, 
new  ones  were  raised,  sacred  offices  were  filled  which 
had  been  vacant,  religious  games  were  instituted  to 
carry  the  Roman  mind  back  to  the  sacred  past.  Livy 
and  Virgil  treated  the  past  from  a  religious  point  of 
view,  showing  the  sacred  mission  of  the  Roman  race, 
and  exhibiting  the  valour  and  piety  of  the  founders 
of  the  state.  If  the  Roman  religion  could  be  revived 
these  were  the  proper  means  to  do  it.  But  the  religion 
of  the  future  was  not  to  be  prepared  in  this  way. 

Books  Recommended 

The  sections  on  religion  in  Mon-imsen's  History  of  Rome. 

Ramsay's  Roman  Antiquities. 

Wissowa,  Religio7i  und  Culttir  dc?'  Romer. 

Ilolwerda,  in  De  la  Saussaye. 

For  the  period  of  the  Empire,  Boissier's  La  Religion  Romaiiu, 

See  also  the  work  of  Cumont,  cited  p.  169. 


CHAPTER   XVIII 

THE   RELIGIONS   OF   INDIA 

I.   The  Vedic  Religion 

No  contrast  could  well  be  greater  than  that  between  the 
German  religion  and  that  of  India.  In  the  one  case  we 
have  a  people  full  of  vigour,  but  not  yet  civilised  ;  in 
the  other  a  people  of  high  organisation  and  culture,  but 
deficient  in  vigour;  the  former  religion  is  one  of  action, 
the  latter  one  of  speculation.  From  the  original  Aryan 
faith,  to  which  that  of  the  Teutons  most  closely  approxi- 
mates, Indian  religion  is  removed  by  two  great  steps. 
First  we  have  as  a  variety  of  Aryan  faith  the  Indo-Iranian 
religion,  that  of  the  undivided  ancestors  of  Persians  and 
Indians  alike,  in  the  dim  period  antecedent  to  the 
Aryan  settlement  of  India.  Of  this  religion,  the 
common  mother  of  those  of  Persia  and  of  India,  we 
shall  give  some  sketch  after  we  have  made  acquaint- 
ance with  the  gods  of  India,  at  the  beginning  of  our 
Persian  chapter.  Indian  religion  is  a  variety  of  Indo- 
Iranian,  which  is  a  variety  of  the  Aryan  type.  Neither 
its  genealogy  nor  its  character  entitles  it  to  be  taken 
as  a  typical  example  of  the  Aryan  religions.  In  literary 
chronology  it  is  the  earliest  of  them,  inasmuch  as  its 
books  are  the  oldest  sacred  literature  of  Aryan  faith  ; 
but  in  point  of  development  it  is  not  an  early  but  an 
advanced  product.  The  absorbing  interest  it  offers  to 
the  student  of  our  science  is  due  to  the  fact  that  it 
presents  in  an  unbroken  sequence  a  growth  of  religious 

324 


CHAP.  XVIII  The  Vedic  Religion  325 

thought,  which,  beginning  with  simple  conceptions  and 
advancing  to  a  great  priestly  ritual,  can  be  seen  to 
pass  into  mysticism  and  asceticism,  and  thence  to  the 
rejection  of  all  gods  and  rites,  and  a  system  of  salva- 
tion by  individual  good  conduct.  Nowhere  else  can 
the  progress  of  religion  through  what  we  might  call 
its  seven  ages  of  life  be  seen  so  clearly,  nor  the  logical 
connection  of  these  ages  with  each  other  be  recognised 
so  unmistakably.  The  present  chapter  deals  with  the 
infancy  and  lusty  youth  of  the  religion  as  seen  in 
Vedism  ;  the  later  stages  of  Brahmanism  and  Buddhism 
will  be  spoken  of  in  subsequent  chapters. 

I.  The  Rigveda. — The  Vedic  religion  takes  its  name 
from  the  Rigveda,  the  oldest  portion  of  Indian  literature, 
and  the  earliest  literary  document  of  Aryan  religion.  Of 
four  vedas  or  collections  of  hymns,  the  Rigveda  is  the 
oldest  and  most  interesting.  It  contains  a  set  of  hymns 
which,  with  much  more  of  their  early  religious  litera- 
ture, the  Hindus  ascribed  to  direct  divine  revelation, 
but  which  we  know  to  have  been  written  by  men  who 
claimed  no  special  inspiration.  Most  of  them  date  from 
the  time  when  the  Aryans,  having  made  good  their 
entry  in  India,  but  without  by  any  means  altogether 
subduing  the  former  inhabitants,  were  dwelling  in  the 
Punjaub.  The  religion  of  the  hymns  is  a  strongly 
national  one.  The  Aryans  appeal  to  their  gods  to 
help  them  against  the  races,  afterwards  driven  to  the 
south  and  to  the  sea  coasts,  who  differ  from  themselves 
in  colour,  in  physiognomy,  in  language,  in  manners, 
and  in  religion.  Nor  are  these  conquerors  by  any 
means  an  uncultivated  people ;  they  had  long  been 
using  metals ;  they  built  houses, — a  number  together 
in  a  village ;  they  lived  principally  by  keeping  cattle, 
but  also  by  tillage,  and  by  hunting.  They  drank  Sura, 
a  kind  of  brandy,  and  Soma,  a  kind  of  strong  ale,  of 
which  we  shall  hear  more.  They  were,  as  a  rule, 
monogamous,  the  wife  occupying  a  high  position  in 
the   household,  and   assisting  her  husband  in  offering 


326  History  of  Religion  part  iv 

the  domestic  sacrifice.  At  the  head  of  each  state  was 
a  king,  as  among  the  Greeks  of  Homer  ;  he  was  not, 
however,  an  absolute  monarch ;  his  people  met  in 
council  and  controlled  him.  The  king  himself  offered 
sacrifice  for  his  tribe  in  his  own  house, — there  were  no 
temples, — but  he  was  frequently  assisted  by  a  man  or 
several  men  of  special  learning  in  such  rites. 

The  hymns  of  the  Rigveda  were  written  for  use  at 
sacrifices.  The  sacrifice  consists  of  food  and  drink  of 
which  the  god  who  is  addressed  is  invited  to  come  and 
partake,  or  which  are  conveyed  to  the  gods  seated  on 
their  heavenly  thrones,  by  means  of  fire.  Soma,  the 
intoxicating  juice  of  the  soma  plant,  is  an  invariable 
feature  of  the  banquets  in  these  hymns ;  the  solid 
part  consists  of  butter,  milk,  rice  or  cakes  ;  but  animals 
were  also  killed,  and  the  horse-sacrifice  was  a  specially 
important  one.  The  hymn  also  is'  an  essential  part 
of  the  rite ;  the  sacrifice  would  have  no  virtue  with- 
out it.  It  consists  of  praise  and  prayer.  The  deity  is 
extolled  for  the  exploits  he  has  done,  for  his  strength, 
for  his  beauty,  for  his  wisdom  or  his  goodness,  he  is 
invoked  again  and  again  to  partake  of  what  has  been 
provided  for  him,  and  in  return  he  is  asked  to  send 
the  worshipper  food  or  cows,  guidance  or  protection, 
or  whatever  the  latter  is  in  want  of 

The  Vedic  Gods. — And  who  are  the  gods  who  receive 
this  worship?  They  are  parts  of  nature  or  celestial 
phenomena,  more  or  less  personified.  Worship  is 
directed  now  to  one  divine  being,  now  to  another ; 
each  has  a  story  which  is  dwelt  on  and  a  number  of 
functions  belonging  to  him,  for  the  sake  of  which  he 
is  extolled  and  sought  after ;  each  god,  that  is  to  say, 
has  his  myth.  In  this  set  of  gods  the  myths  are  so 
clear  that  we  can  identify  with  perfect  confidence  each 
of  the  gods  with  that  part  of  Nature  from  which  he  arose. 

M.  Barth  classifies  the  Vedic  gods  according  to  the 
degree  in  which  they  have  become  detached  from  their 
natural  basis.     There  are  two  which  are  not  so  detached 


CHAP.  XVIII  The  Vedic  Religion  327 

at  all.  Agflli,  who  is  one  of  the  chief  deities  of  the 
Rigveda,  is  fire,  and  Soma,  the  deity  to  whom  all  the 
hymns  of  the  ninth  book  are  addressed,  is  simply  the 
juice  of  the  soma  plant,  the  liquid  part  of  every  sacrifice, 
Agni  is  not  any  particular  fire,  but  fire  as  a  cosmic 
principle,  born  in  heaven,  born  also  daily  at  the  sacrifice 
by  the  rubbing  together  of  two  pieces  of  wood,  his 
parents  whom  he  consumes.  He  is  a  priest  carrying 
the  offerings  of  men  up  to  the  gods,  but  he  was  a  priest 
at  the  first  sacrifice,  the  primeval  heavenly  sacrifice, 
before  he  had  come  down  to  men.  He  is  also  the  guest 
and  household  friend  of  man,  a  kindly  and  familiar 
being.  But  he  pervades  all  nature,  and  all  growth  and 
energy  are  due  to  him.  Soma,  also  inseparably  con- 
nected with  all  sacrifice,  who  strengthens  the  gods  and 
makes  them  immortal,  is  likewise  a  universal  principle  ; 
he  too  came  at  first  from  heaven,  and  he  too  is  at  work 
all  through  the  world.  There  are  stories  of  his  first  pro- 
duction among  the  gods,  and  of  the  first  effects  of  his 
appearance ;  he  is  the  nourisher  of  plants,  he  gives 
inspiration  to  the  poet  and  fervour  to  prayer.  Along 
with  Agni  he  kindled  the  sun  and  the  stars. 

In  other  gods  there  is  a  nearer  approach  to  a  human 
figure,  and  the  physical  side  is  not  so  obtrusive.  Indra 
is  most  frequently  invoked  of  all  the  gods,  and  may  be 
called  the  national  god  of  this  period.  He  is  described 
as  a  chieftain  standing  in  a  chariot  drawn  by  two  horses. 
He  waged  a  great  battle,  but  still  wages  it  constantly, 
against  the  monsters  of  heat  and  drought,  Vrittra,  the 
coverer,  and  Ahi  the  dragon,  for  the  deliverance  of  the 
cows,  the  heavenly  waters,  kept  by  them  in  captivity. 
The  contest  between  the  god  and  the  demon  goes  on 
for  ever.  Indra  is  also  the  giver  of  good  things  of 
every  kind,  he  keeps  the  heavenly  bodies  in  their 
places,  he  is  the  author  and  preserver  of  all  life,  the 
inspirer  of  all  noble  thoughts  and  the  answerer  of  pious 
prayers,  the  rewarder  of  all  who  trust  in  him,  and  the 
forgiver  of  the  penitent.     It  is  good  to  sacrifice  to  him 


328  History  of  Religion  part  iv 

and  to  offer  him  soma  in  abundance ;  for  it  strengthens 
him  to  take  up  afresh  his  conflicts  and  labours  as  the 
champion  of  man.  Indra  is  surrounded  by  the  Maruts, 
the  storm-gods,  who  are  separately  invoked  in  many 
hymns.  They  drive  through  the  sky  with  splendour 
and  with  mighty  music,  and  bring  rain  to  the  parched 
earth.  Their  father  is  Rudra,  also  a  god  of  storms, 
the  handsomest  of  all  the  gods,  and,  in  spite  of  his 
thunderbolts,  a  helpful  and  kindly  being.  Wherever 
he  sees  evil  done,  he  hurls  his  spear  to  smite  the  evil- 
doer, but  he  is  also  a  healer  of  both  physical  and  moral 
evils,  and  the  best  of  all  physicians.  Of  the  same  order 
of  deities  are  Vata  or  Vayu,  the  wind,  and  Parjanya, 
the  rain-storm.  But  the  loftiest  of  all  the  Vedic  gods 
is  Varuna,  the  great  serene  luminous  heaven.  The 
hymns  addressed  to  him  are  comparatively  few,  but 
among  them  are  those  which  rise  to  the  highest  moral 
and  religious  level.  In  language  recalling  that  of  the 
psalmists  and  prophets  of  the  Bible,  they  exalt  Varuna 
as  the  creator  of  the  world  and  of  heaven  and  the  stars, 
as  the  omniscient  defender  of  the  good  and  avenger  of 
all  evil,  as  just  and  holy,  and  yet  full  of  compassion,  so 
that  the  conscience-stricken  suppliant  is  encouraged  to 
turn  to  him. 

We  here  give  a  few  extracts  from  hymns  addressed  to 
some  of  the  gods  we  have  spoken  of.  The  versions  are 
those  of  the  late  Dr.  John  Muir.  A  metrical  version  can 
scarcely  represent  the  hymns  with  the  accuracy  the 
scholar  would  desire,  but,  on  the  other  hand,  a  literal 
translation,  such  as  that  of  Professor  Max  Miiller  in 
vol.  xxxii.  of  the  Sacred  Books  of  the  East,  gives  a 
less  true  idea  of  the  spirit  of  the  pieces,  and  is  less 
fitted  at  least  for  a  work  like  this. 

To  Indra 

Thou,  Indra,  oft  of  old  hast  quaffed 
With  keen  delight,  our  Soma  draught. 
All  gods  delicious  Soma  love  ; 
But  thou,  all  other  gods  above. 


CHAP.  XVIII  The  Vedic  Religion  329 

Thy  mother  knew  how  well  this  juice 
Was  fitted  for  her  infant's  use, 
Into  a  cup  she  crushed  the  sap 
Which  thou  didst  sip  upon  her  lap  ; 
Yes,  Indra,  on  thy  natal  morn. 
The  very  hour  that  thou  wast  born, 
Thou  didst  those  jovial  tastes  display, 
Which  still  survive  in  strength  to-day. 
And  once,  thou  prince  of  genial  souls, 
Men  say  thou  drained'st  thirty  bowls. 
To  thee  the  Soma  draughts  proceed, 
As  streamlets  to  the  lake  they  feed. 
Or  rivers  to  the  ocean  speed. 
Our  cup  is  foaming  to  the  brim 
With  Soma  pressed  to  sound  of  hymn. 
Come,  drink,  thy  utmost  craving  slake, 
Like  thirsty  stag  in  forest  lake, 
Or  bull  that  roams  in  arid  waste, 
And  burns  the  cooling  brook  to  taste. 
Indulge  thy  taste,  and  quaff  at  will ; 
Drink,  drink  again,  profusely  swill ! 

Another  to  Indra 

And  thou  dost  view  with  special  grace, 

The  fair  complexioned  Aryan  race, 

Who  own  the  gods,  their  laws  obey, 

And  pious  homage  duly  pay. 

Thou  giv'st  us  horses,  cattle,  gold, 

As  thou  didst  give  our  sires  of  old. 

Thou  sweep's!  away  the  dark-skinned  brood, 

Inhuman,  lawless,  senseless,  rude. 

Who  know  not  Indra,  hate  his  friends. 

And  spoil  the  race  which  he  defends. 

Chase  far  away,  the  robbers,  chase. 

Slay  those  barbarians  black  and  base. 

And  save  us,  Indra,  from  the  spite 

Of  sprites  that  haunt  us  in  the  night, 

Our  rites  disturb  by  contact  vile. 

Our  hallowed  offerings  defile. 

Preserve  us,  friend,  dispel  our  fears. 

And  let  us  live  a  hundred  years. 

And  when  our  earthly  course  we've  run, 

And  gained  the  region  of  the  Sun, 

Then  let  us  live  in  ceaseless  glee, 

Sweet  Soma  quaffing  there  with  thee. 


330  History  of  Religion  part  iv 

To  Agni 

Gireat  Agni,  though  thine  essence  be  but  one, 
Thy  forms  are  three  ;  as  fire  thou  blazest  here. 
As  Hghtning  flashest  in  the  atmosphere, 
In  heaven  thou  flamest  as  the  golden  sun. 

It  was  in  heaven  thou  hadst  thy  primal  birth, 
But  thence  of  yore  a  holy  sage  benign. 
Conveyed  thee  down  on  human  hearths  to  shine. 
And  thou  abid'st  a  denizen  of  earth. 

Sprung  from  the  mystic  pair  by  priestly  hands, 
In  wedlock  joined,  forth  flashes  Agni  bright ; 
But — O  ye  heaven  and  earth  I  tell  you  right — 
The  unnatural  child  devours  the  parent  brands. 

To  Varuna 

The  mighty  lord  on  high  our  deeds,  as  if  at  hand,  espies  ; 

The  gods  know  all  men  do,  though  men  would  fain  their  acts 

disguise. 
Whoever  stands,  whoever  moves,  or  steals  from  place  to  place. 
Or  hides  him  in  his  secret  cell, — the  gods  his  movements  trace- 
Wherever  two  together  plot,  and  deem  they  are  alone 
King  Varuna  is  there,  a  third,  and  all  their  schemes  are  known. 
This  earth  is  his,  to  him  belong  those  vast  and  boundless  skies  ; 
Both  seas  within  him  rest,  and  yet  in  that  small  pool  he  lies. 
Whoever  far  beyond  the  sky  should  think  his  way  to  wing, 
He  could  not  there  elude  the  grasp  of  Varuna  the  king. 
His  spies,  descending  from  the  skies,  ghde  all  this  world  around, 
Their  thousand  eyes  all-scanning  sweep  to  earth's  remotest  bound. 
Whate'er  exists  in  heaven  and  earth,  whate'er  beyond  the  skies, 
Before  the  eyes  of  Varuna,  the  king,  unfolded  lies. 
The  ceaseless  winkings  all  he  counts  of  every  mortal's  eyes,      * 
He  wields  this  universal  frame  as  gamester  throws  his  dice. 
Those  knotted  nooses  which  thou  fling'st,  O  God,  the  bad  to  snare, 
All  liars  let  them  overtake,  but  all  the  truthful  spare. 

Varuna,  the  all-embracing  sky,  is  also  in  many  hymns 
a  solar  deity.  There  are  also  other  solar  deities  ;  Mitra 
who  is  frequently  invoked  along  with  Varuna ;  Surya, 
Savitri,  Vishnu,  and  Pushan,  are  all  gods  of  this  class. 
Each  of  these  has  some  attributes  or  some  story  of  his 
own.  Surya  keeps  his  eye  on  men  and  reports  their  fail- 
ings to  Varuna  and  Mitra.    Savitri,  the  quickener,  raises 


CHAP,  xviii  The  Vedic  Religion  331 

all  things  from  sleep  in  the  morning  with  his  long  arms  of 
gold,  and  covers  them  with  sleep  in  the  evening.  Vishnu, 
the  active,  traverses  the  universe  with  three  strides. 
Pushan  is  a  shepherd  who  loses  none  of  his  flock ;  a 
guide  also,  both  in  the  journeys  of  this  world  and  in  the 
last  journey.  A  number  of  the  principal  gods  have  the 
common  title  of  Adityas  or  children  of  Aditi,  immensity, 
a  being  too  vast  and  undetermined  to  be  clearly  repre- 
sented. We  should  also  mention  Ushas,  the  dawn,  a 
goddess  whom  the  sun-god  is  daily  chasing ;  the  Asvins 
or  two  heavenlycharioteers,  who  daily  make  the  circuit  of 
the  heavens  ;  Tvashtri,  the  smith  who  made  the  thunder- 
bolt of  Indra  ;  the  Ribhus,  artificers  who  were  once  men 
and  have  been  admitted  to  the  society  of  the  gods.  Yama 
is  the  god  of  the  dead,  he  first  traversed  the  road  to  the 
country  beyond,  and  now  he  rules  over  it,  and  comforts 
with  substantial  joys  the  spirits  guided  there  by  Agni 
(this  points  to  cremation  which  was  frequent  but  not 
universal)  or  by  Pushan.  There  the  Pitris  or  fathers 
sit  at  the  same  tables  with  the  gods,  and  are  eternally 
happy.  Brahmanaspati,  lord  of  prayer,  is  a  god  of 
another  type,  a  personification  of  the  act  of  ritual,  and 
his  presence  in  the  Vedas,  beside  the  elemental  deities, 
shows  how  early  speculation  had  begun. 

To  what  Stagre  does  this  Religion  belong"? — Our 
sketch  of  this  system  is  necessarily  brief;  we  have  now 
to  inquire  as  to  the  place  it  occupies  in  the  religious 
growth  of  India.  It  is  held,  on  the  one  hand,  that  it  is 
a  primitive  religious  product,  that  it  shows  us  some 
of  the  very  first  efforts  men  made  to  have  a  religion  ; 
while  on  the  other  hand  it  is  held  that  the  Vedic  hymns 
and  the  Vedic  system  are  sacerdotal,  and  are  due  to  an 
advanced  organisation  of  worship  and  to  a  special  set  of 
men  who  were  much  in  advance  of  their  age. 

I.  It  is  Primitive. — Mr.  Max  Muller^  says  that  "the 
sacred  books  of  India  offer  the  same  advantages  ...  for 
the  study  of  the  origin  and  growth  of  religion  .  .  .  which 

^  Origin  of  Religion,  p.  135. 


332  History  of  Religion  part  iv 

Sanscrit  has  offered  for  the  study  of  the  origin  and 
growth  of  human  speech."  Dr.  Muir^  claims  that  the 
Vedic  hymns  illustrate  the  natural  workings  of  the 
human  mind  in  the  period  of  its  infancy.  In  the  Vedas, 
these  writers  consider,  we  are  able  to  watch  the  process 
by  which  the  earliest  men  rose  to  the  belief  in  gods,  and 
the  naive  and  simple  methods  by  which  man's  first 
intercourse  with  gods  was  carried  on.  The  undoubted 
antiquity  of  these  pieces  favours  this  view  ;  the  Rigveda 
is  admitted  on  all  hands  to  be  the  earliest  part  of 
Indian  literature,  and  many  of  the  hymns  were  written 
about  1 500  B.c.^  The  pure  and  simple  nature  of  the  Vedic 
religion  may  also  appear  to  favour  this  view.  It  is  a 
religion  singularly  free  from  the  lower  elements  of  man's 
early  faith.  Savage  legends  and  especially  immoral 
stories  of  the  gods  are  markedly  absent  from  the 
hymns;  they  are  also  free  from  the  element  of  magic 
and  fetishism  ;  the  gods  are  great  beings,  and  religion 
consists  in  intercourse  with  these  great  beings.  Now 
the  later  religious  literature  of  India,  the  brahmanas  or 
commentaries  on  the  Rigveda  and  the  other  later  Vedas, 
contain  a  variety  of  legends  and  a  religion  by  no  means 
free  from  magic.  It  may  be  maintained  therefore  that 
the  pure  religion  of  the  Aryans  afterwards  became  con- 
taminated by  contact  with  the  lower  religion  of  the 
tribes  the  Aryans  had  conquered.  It  was  from  the 
Dravidian  and  Kolarian  aborigines,  we  are  told,  that 
Indian  religion  took  its  later  corruptions.  The  Vedic 
religion  has  no  idols,  it  has  no  dark  descriptions  of  hell, 
•the  caste  system  on  which  later  Brahmanism  was  based 
is  absent  from  it,  it  has  no  demons  to  be  guarded 
against,  and  no  bad  deities.  The  doctrine  of  metem- 
psychosis is  not  found  here,  except  perhaps  in  germ. 
The  immolation  of  the  widow  on  the  funeral  pile  of  her 
husband  is  not  sanctioned  by  the  Vedas,  and  of  ancestor- 

^  Sanscrit  Texts,  vol.  v.  p.  4. 

-  According  to  Mr.  Max  Miiller  the  Mantra  or  hymn  period  is  to  be 
placed  IOOO-8CX3  b.c.  j  but  other  scholars  place  it  earlier. 


CHAP.  XVIII  The  Vedic  Religion  333 

worship  only  a  few  traces  are  found.  All  these,  it  may 
be  held,  are  later  corruptions.  The  Vedic  religion  is  a 
bright  and  happy  system,  and  the  primitive  beliefs  of 
mankind,  less  changed  by  the  Indians  than  they  were 
elsewhere,  are  here  to  be  seen  ;  the  hymns  show  the 
kind  of  faith  to  which  a  strong  and  happy  race  of  men 
naturally  came,  as  their  minds  began  to  open  to  the 
wonders  of  the  world  they  lived  in,  the  faith  of  "  primi- 
tive shepherds  praising  their  gods  as  they  lead  their 
flocks  to  the  pasture."  The  Indians  had  preserved, 
longer  than  other  peoples,  the  gift  of  recognising  deity 
in  nature  ;  and  the  primitive  beliefs  of  mankind  survive 
here  in  something  like  their  first  integrity,  while  else- 
where they  were  broken  up  and  confused. 

2.  It  is  Advanced. — On  the  other  hand,  it  is  urged 
that  the  society  in  which  the  hymns  arose  was  not 
a  primitive  one,  but  one  considerably  advanced  both 
in  arts  and  institutions.  The  Rishis  (seers),  who 
composed  them,  belonged  to  families  who  cultivated 
such  an  art ;  and  the  hymns  were  no  artless  out- 
pourings of  childlike  emotion,  but  were  written  on 
an  elaborate  metrical  system  for  a  definite  purpose, 
namely,  to  form  part  of  great  acts  of  worship.  As 
for  the  absence  from  them  of  savage  myths  and  of 
immoral  stories  of  the  gods,  this  fact  does  not  prove 
that  such  things  were  not  known  to  the  people  at 
the  time,  but  only  that  the  poets  did  not  put  them 
in  their  hymns.  Mr.  Lang  has  collected  the  savage 
myths,  similar  to  those  of  other  peoples  in  various 
parts  of  the  world,  which  are  found  in  Indian  literature 
of  a  later  date,  and  has  also  shown  that  the  hymns 
themselves  were  not  quite  ignorant  of  some  of  them. 
The  Indians  knew  the  myth  of  the  marriage  of  heaven 
and  earth,  with  the  consequent  birth  of  the  gods. 
They  had  the  story  of  the  deluge.  They  had  the 
still  more  primitive  story  of  the  raising  up  of  the 
earth  from  the  bottom  of  the  sea.  They  had  vari- 
ous  myths   of  old   conflicts   of  the   gods,  and  of  the 


234  History  of  Religion  part  iv 

production  of  the  earth  and  all  the  men  in  it  from  the 
dissection   of  an   immense  prototypal  human  monster. 
Men  were  of  different  castes,  they  held,  because  they 
came  from  different  portions  of  Purusha's  body  when 
it  was  cut  up.     Many  stories  are  to  be  found  in  Indian 
literature  which  when  found  elsewhere  are  judged  to 
be  products  of  savage  imagination,  and  the  fact  that 
the  Rigveda  ignores  some  of  them  and  refines  others, 
simply  shows  that  the  authors  of  that  collection  were 
on  a  higher  level  than  their  people  in  point  of  cultiva- 
tion and  of  piety,  as  the  psalmists  and  the  prophets 
of   Israel    were    in    advance   of    theirs.      We   are   led, 
accordingly,   towards   the   conclusion    that  during    the 
period  when  the  hymns  were  written  those  who  took 
charge  of  the  development  of  worship  in   India  were 
seeking  to  draw  away  attention  from  the  more  super- 
stitious and  childish  elements  of  religion,  and  to  bring 
to  the  front  the  pure  and  lofty  intercourse  man  could 
have  with  the  good  gods.     Bad  gods  are  not  cultivated  ; 
if  there  are  foolish   stories   about   the   gods,  they  are 
not  repeated,  everything  dark  and  terrible,  as  well  as 
everything   irrational,   is   removed    from    the    working 
religion.     Ancestor-worship  is  not  encouraged  ;   family 
rites  continued,  but   the   worship  was  wider  than  the 
family,   and    was    not    restricted   to    particular   places. 
The    ideas    connected    with    sacrifice   are   not   indeed 
very   Lofty.       Sacrifice    is,   in    the    first   place,    barter. 
Gifts  are  provided  for  the  gods,  that  they  may  give 
in  their  turn.     In  the  second  place  it  is  a  social  function 
in  which  the  god  and  the  worshipper  both  take  part. 
The   food,   and   especially   the   soma,   strengthens   the 
god,  and   man  and  god  are  thereby  drawn  into  close 
sympathy.     But  in  the  third  place  sacrifice  was  a  piece 
of  magic.     The  mere  accurate  performance  of  the  rite 
had   a   mystic   efficacy.      It   was   believed    to   help  to 
uphold  the  order  of  the  world  ;    without  it  the  gods 
would    grow    weak,   the   ordinances   of    nature   would 
fail,  and  man  would  relapse  to  the  state  of  savagery. 


CHAP.  XVIII  The  Vedic  Religion  335 

The  gods  themselves  first  sacrificed ;  from  sacrifice 
they  themselves  were  born,  so  that  sacrifice  is  an 
essential  principle  of  the  universe,  was  so  in  the 
beginning,  and  must  always  be  so.  The  Vedic  leaders 
of  religion,  therefore,  were  not  merely  champions  of 
enlightenment  in  religion  ;  they  were  also  ritualists, 
the  rite  was  to  them  an  end  in  itself;  the  proper 
performance  of  sacrifice  was  their  principal  object. 
This  side  of  their  work  had,  as  we  shall  see,  grave 
consequences.  But  the  Rigvejja  did  a  great  work 
for  India  in  cultivating  gods  who  were  moral,  and  to 
whom  man  was  drawn  by  higher  than  selfish  motives. 
Gods  who  are  just  and  who  watch  man's  conduct, 
and  do  not  fail  to  reward  him  according  to  his 
deeds,  must  quicken  the  conscience  of  those  who 
believe  in  them,  and  gods  who  are  able  to  help  the 
weak  and  to  forgive  the  penitent  must  make  their 
people  also  merciful.  In  all  the  aberrations  of  Indian 
religion  the  high  moral  standard  set  by  the  Vedic 
gods  is  never  lost  sight  of. 

Where  a  plurality  of  gods  is  believed  in,  these  gods 
must  stand  in  some  relation  to  each  other ;  and  it  is 
of  importance  to  notice  how  the  g^ods  of  the  Veda  are 
arranged.  We  can  see  here  very  clearly  how  unstable 
a  thing  polytheism  is.  The  position  of  the  gods  is 
constantly  changing  with  reference  to  each  other.  We 
find  Agni  addressed  as  if  he  were  undoubtedly  supreme  ; 
he  dwells  in  the  highest  heavens,  he  generates  the 
gods,  he  ordains  the  order  of  the  universe ;  but  then 
we  find  Indra  spoken  of  in  the  same  way,  and  Varuna, 
and  Mitra,  and  others.  Then  we  find  pairs  of  gods 
addressed  together.  Indra  and  Agni  are  frequently 
so  treated ;  so  are  Varuna  and  Mitra.  There  is  no 
supreme  god,  or  rather,  each  god  is  supreme  in  turn ; 
the  poet  wants  a  god  capable  of  being  exalted  in 
every  way,  and  does  so  exalt  the  god  he  has  before 
him.  In  this  way  a  Monotheism  is  reached  ;  the 
mind   recognises  a  god  to  whom  unlimited  adoration 


336  History  of  Religion  part  iv 

can  be  paid.  But  it  is  a  monotheism,  as  M.  Barth 
well  puts  it,  the  titular  god  of  which  is  always 
changing;  and  Mr.  Max  Miiller  gives  to  this  partial 
monotheism  the  name  of  Kathenotheism  ;  that  is, 
the  worship  of  one  god  at  a  time  without  any  denial 
that  other  gods  exist  and  are  worthy  of  adoration. 
Now  this  form  of  religion,  in  which  several  gods  are 
worshipped,  each  of  whom  in  turn  is  regarded  as 
supreme,  is  not  peculiar  to  India ;  we  have  met  with 
it  already,  we  shall  meet  with  it  again.  But  in  India 
a  peculiar  way  was  found  out  of  the  difficulty.  The 
Indian  gods  were  too  little  defined,  too  little  personal, 
too  much  alike,  to  maintain  their  separate  personalities 
with  great  tenacity  ;  nor  did  they  lend  themselves  to 
a  monarchical  form  of  pantheon ;  no  one  of  them  was 
sufficiently  marked  out  from  the  rest  or  above  the 
rest,  to  rule  permanently  over  them.  Yet  the  sense 
of  unity  in  Indian  religion  is  very  strong ;  from  the 
first  the  Indian  mind  is  seeking  a  way  to  adjust  the 
claims  of  the  various  gods,  and  view  them  all  as  one. 
An  early  idea  which  makes  in  this  direction  is  that 
of  Rita,  the  order,  not  specially  connected  with  any 
one  god,  which  rules  both  in  the  physical  and  the 
moral  world,  and  with  which  all  beings  have  to  reckon. 
Philosophy  is  busy  from  the  first  with  the  Vedic 
gods;  the  impulse  to  good  conduct  and  that  to 
mysticism  are  equally  innate  in  this  religion.  We 
can  see,  even  in  the  Rigveda,  that  India  is  to  solve 
the  problem  of  its  many  gods  not  in  the  way  of 
Monotheism,  by  making  one  god  rule  over  the  others, 
but  in  the  way  of  Pantheism,  by  making  all  the  gods 
modes  or  manifestations  of  one  being.  "  Agni  is  all 
the  Gods  "  we  read  here.  And  a  religion  which  arranges 
its  objects  of  worship  in  this  way  will  not  be  a  religion 
of  action,  but  of  speculation  and  of  resignation. 


CHAP,  xvni  The  Vedic  Religion  2)Z1 


Books  Recommended 

S.  B.  E.  vol.  xxxii.     Vedic  Hymns,     xlvi.  Hymns  to  Agni. 

Muir's  Sanscrit  Texts. 

M.  Miiller's  Hibbert  Lectures. 

Monier    Williams,     Indian     Wisdom;     Hinduism    in    "  Non  -  Christian 

Religious  Systems  "  (S.P.C.K.). 
Kaegi,  The  Rigveda,  the  oldest  literature  of  the  Indians,  1886. 
Barth,  The  Religions  of  India,  in  Triibner's  Oriental  Series. 
Herrmann  Oldenberg,  Die  Religion  der  Veda,  1894. 
Bergaigne,  La  Religion  V(!dique,  3  vols.,  1878-83. 
E.    Hardy,    Die    Vedisch   Brahmanische  Periode   der  Religion  des   alien 

Indiens. 
Lehmann,  in  De  la  Saussaye. 
Rhys  Davids,  Oxford  Proceedings^  vol   i     p.  i,  sqq^ 


CHAPTER   XIX 

INDIA 

II.  Brahmanism 

The  period  in  which  the  songs  were  collected  by  the 
Aryans  dwelling  in  the  Punjaub  was  succeeded  by  a 
period  of  wars  and  troubles,  after  which  the  successful 
race  is  found  to  have  spread  further  towards  the  East, 
and  to  have  settled  on  the  Ganges  and  its  tributaries. 
Along  with  this  change  of  position  a  great  change  has 
also  taken  place  in  the  spirit  of  the  people,  a  change 
which  is  strikingly  seen  in  their  religion.  The  priest- 
hood has  come  to  occupy  the  position  of  a  separate 
class  to  an  extent  not  formerly  the  case,  and  all  the 
phenomena  are  apparent  which  are  generally  found 
associated  with  a  hierocracy  or  rule  of  priests.  The 
early  religious  writings  have  been  formed  into  a  sacred 
canon  :  there  is  an  active  production  of  new  works 
which  explain  the  old  ones ;  the  sacrifices  grow  more 
elaborate  and  new  virtues  are  attributed  to  them ;  and 
along  with  this  hardening  and  formalising  of  the  outward 
parts  of  religion  there  is  a  religious  speculation  of  great 
voliitri'e  and  of  great  freedom  of  character. 

The  Caste  System :  The  Brahmans. — The  key  to  the 
whole  movement  is  to  be  found  in  the  new  position  of 
the  priesthood,  or  in  the  establishment  at  this  period 
of  the  system  of  caste.  Though  this  system  is  only 
once  mentioned  in  the  Rigveda,  and  that  in  a  hymn  of 
late  date,  scholars  find  traces  of  it  in  the  arrangement 
of  the  hymns,  and  as  it  is  found  in  Persia,  the  Indians 
probably  had  it  before  they  entered  India.  It  may 
even,  it  is  judged,  be  traceable  to  the  division  of  ranks 

338 


CHAP.  XIX  Brah 


mamsm 


339 


among  the  primitive  Aryan  families.  Teutonic  as  well 
as  Indian  legends  are  found  explaining  how  mankind 
were  divided  from  the  first  into  different  classes.^  But 
the  primitive  differences  of  rank  must  have  had  a  great 
development  before  they  took  shape  in  the  rigid  caste 
system  of  India.  This  system  appears  to  be  organised 
with  a  view  expressly  to  the  exaltation  of  the  priesthood, 
and  must  have  been  the  result  of  a  struggle  between  the 
priests  and  the  warrior  or  ruling  classes.  The  priests  have 
made  themselves  indispensable  in  nearly  all  religious 
acts.  Their  very  title  shows  this.  While  Brahman,  as 
the  name  of  a  god,  means  primarily  growth,  and  later, 
devotion  or  prayer,  brahmana  (neut.)  signifies  the  ritual 
texts  according  to  which  worship  is  performed,  and 
brahman  (mas.)  is  the  name  of  those  who  use  such 
texts,  and  comes  to  stand  for  the  highest  caste  of 
Indian  society.  Without  the  brahman  there  can  be 
no  satisfactory  worship,  because  there  can  be  no 
security  that  any  rite  is  performed  correctly ;  and  a 
rite  which  is  not  performed  correctly  has  no  efficacy. 
Religion,  therefore,  is  in  the  hands  of  this  caste,  whose 
sacredness  is  hereditary,  and  cannot  be  acquired  in  any 
other  way  than  by  birth.  The  members  of  that  caste 
and  they  alone  are  qualified  to  superintend  religious 
observances,  and  without  them  the  intercourse  between 
man  and  the  gods  cannot  be  kept  up.  From  his  birth 
the  brahman  is  a  being  of  superior  holiness ;  he  is 
destined  for  higher  ends  than  other  men,  and  the  dis- 
tinction between  him  and  them  must  be  manifested  in 
all  his  acts  and  habits  throughout  his  life.  He  is  the 
natural  lord  of  all  the  classes. 

If  the  highest  caste  is  strictly  defined,  so  also  are  the 
others.  The  second  caste  is  that  of  the  Kshatriyas, 
warriors  or  rulers,  the  third  that  of  the  Vaisyas  or 
farmers.  These  three  have  rank,  they  are  the  twice- 
born  classes  (their  second  birth  answers  to  confirmation, 
and  takes  place  when  a  young  man  is  invested  with  the 

^  Compare  Hans  Sachs,  Die  Ungleichen  Kinder  Evds. 


340  History  of  Religion  part  iv 

sacred  thread).  The  Sudras  are  the  fourth  and  lowest 
class  ;  no  duty  is  assigned  to  them  in  the  law  books 
but  that  of  serving  meekly  the  other  castes.  It  has 
been  thought  that  the  Sudras  represent  the  conquered 
aborigines,  the  three  classes  of  rank  belonging  to  the 
Aryan  invaders,  but  this  is  open  to  question. 

The  student  of  religion  has  to  fix  his  attention  on  the 
Brahmans,  who  have  secured  themselves  in  the  position 
of  the  leading  caste.  We  speak  first  of  the  literary 
movement  in  which  they  were  concerned,  then  of  the 
sacrifices  they  conducted,  and  of  their  gods.  We  shall 
then  say  something  of  the  practical  operation  of  their 
religion  as  a  rule  of  life,  and  lastly  we  shall  come  to 
the  speculative  work  of  their  period,  which  is  not, 
however,  to  be  set  down  to  them  alone. 

I,  The  Growth  of  the  Sacred  Literature. — The 
Vedas  rose  in  sacredness  after  the  age  which  pro- 
duced them  passed  away,  A  few  centuries  after  they 
were  written  they  were  not  generally  intelligible ; 
they  needed  interpretation,  but  at  the  same  time  the 
doctrine  of  their  inspiration  rose  higher  and  higher. 
The  brahmans  had  both  to  interpret  the  words  of  the 
old  hymns  and  to  explain  how,  when  used  at  the 
sacrifice,  they  produced  the  effect  ascribed  to  them. 
This  led  to  the  production  of  the  earliest  Indian  prose, 
the  brahmanas  or  ritual  treatises.  Primarily  intended 
to  be  directories  of  worship  for  the  priests,  these  works 
were  enriched  with  all  sorts  of  ideas  about  the  sacri- 
fices, their  origin,  and  their  effects  ;  points  in  the  ritual 
are  explained  in  them  by  mythological  stories  which 
we  should  not  otherwise  know,  and  we  see  from  them 
that  many  superstitions,  to  which  the  Vedas  gave  no 
encouragement,  yet  lived  among  the  people.  Each 
Samhita,  or  collection  of  hymns,  had  its  Brahmana, 
and  some  of  the  collections  had  several.  These  works, 
though  transcending  in  dreariness  most  directories  of 
worship,  are  yet  of  great  value  for  the  light  they  throw 
on  the  history  of  Indian  manners  and  ideas,  as  well  as 


CHAP.  XIX  Brakmanism  341 

on  that  of  mythology.  And  as  it  happened  among  the 
Jews  in  their  later  period  so  it  happened  here  ; — the 
sanctity  of  the  text  was  extended  to  the  commentary, 
the  brahmana  also  was  held  to  be  god-given  and  in- 
spired, and  by  some  was  even  more  highly  esteemed 
than  the  hymns  themselves.  A  third  class  of  inspired 
writings  consists  of  the  Upanishads,  or  speculative 
treatises,  of  which  we  shall  speak  later.  The  "  Veda  " 
in  the  larger  sense  is  made  up  of  these  three  bodies 
of  compositions,  mantras,  brahmanas,  and  upanishads. 
These  three  belong  to  revelation  or  "  S'ruti,"  i.e.  hearing; 
what  is  contained  in  these  is  to  be  regarded  as  having 
been  heard  by  inspired  men  from  a  higher  source.  The 
counterpart  of  S'ruti  is  "  smriti,"  i.e.  recollection,  tradi- 
tion. This  embraces  the  Sutras  or  works  dealing  with 
ceremonial  in  the  way  of  short  rules  gathered  from 
the  older  literature,  with  the  exposition  of  the  Vedas, 
with  domestic  rites  and  conventional  usages.  The  law 
books,  the  epics,  and  the  Puranas,  or  ancient  legendary 
histories,  also  belong  to  this  class. 

The  doctrine  of  the  Vedas,  of  their  sacredness  and 
of  their  virtues,  played  a  great  part  in  Indian  thought. 
They  were  revered  not  as  a  written  word,  for  they 
were  not  written  but  handed  down  by  memory, — the 
Brahman  still  knows  his  sacred  literature  by  heart,— 
but  as  hymns  possessing  supernatural  powers  and  of 
far  higher  than  human  origin.  They  were  raised  to 
the  rank  of  a  divinity,  they  were  said  to  have  had  to 
do  with  the  creation  of  the  world,  or  to  have  been 
among  the  first  created  beings.  The  value  of  the  study 
of  them  was  not  to  be  exaggerated ;  he  who  engages 
in  it,  we  hear,  offers  a  complete  sacrifice,  obtains  for 
himself  the  world  which  does  not  pass  away,  and 
becomes  united  with  Brahma.  The  class  of  men  who 
had  installed  themselves  as  the  authorised  interpreters 
of  the  hymns,  had  evidently  taken  up  a  very  strong 
position. 

2.  Sacrifice. — Indian   ritual  is   an   immense  subject. 


342  History  of  Religion  part  iv 

In  the  Vedic  period  there  were  several  orders  of  sacri- 
fice  the  hymns  of  the  Rigveda  have  to  do  with  the 

Soma-sacrifice  alone — and  several  kinds  of  priests,  and 
it  stands  to  reason  that  an  elaborate  ritual  derived 
from  a  distant  age  and  cherished  by  a  priestly  caste 
which  was  growing  in  power,  could  not  quickly  change. 
In  spite  of  the  considerable  amount  of  materials  acces- 
sible in  the  Brahmanas  and  Sutras,  a  history  of  Indian 
sacrifice  as  a  whole  has  still  to  be  written. 

It   is  characteristic  of  early  Indian  sacrifice  that  it 
is   not   confined   to   a  temple   or   to  any  sacred   spot, 
and  that   it  does  not  require  any  image  of  the  deity. 
Instructions   are   always   given  for  choosing  and   pre- 
paring a  place  for  the  rite,  and  for  erecting  an  altar ; 
a   place  had  to  be  prepared    on  each  occasion.     The 
gods  were  asked  to  come,  or  were  thought  to  be  seated 
m  heaven  looking  on;  the  sacrifice  is  in  the  open  air. 
While  the  celebration  proceeded  according  to  a  certain 
ritual,  it  lay  with  the  worshippers  to  fix  to  what  god 
or  gods  the  sacrifice  should  be  addressed.     There  was 
not  one  ritual  for  Agni  and  another  for  Indra,  but  the 
same  would  serve  for  either  or  for  both.     The  sacrifices 
of  which  we  hear  in  the  Brahmanas  are  domestic  rites ; 
they  are  offered  by  the   heads  of  the  household,  who 
invite   ancestors   also   to   be   present.     A  Brahman   is 
present  to  direct  those  who  sacrifice  and  the  inferior 
priests  who   assist   them,  and   the  benefits   of  the  act 
extend  to  all  the  dependants  of  the  household.     The 
time  was  determined  by  natural  seasons  or  by  house- 
hold events.     Some  sacrifices  were  greater  than  others, 
the  more  elaborate  ones  requiring  several  days,  months, 
or  even  years  for  their  celebration.     Among  the  kinds 
of  offerings  which  might  be  made  we  find  that  of  man 
enumerated;  human  sacrifice,  however,  if  it  had  pre- 
vailed in  earlier  times,  had  now  grown  obsolete. 

The  rise  of  the  Brahmans  into  a  caste  changed  the 
character  of  the  sacrifice  by  making  its  due  celebration 
depend  more  on  special  knowledge,  and  by  increasmg 


CHAP.  XIX  Brahmanism  ^^-y 

its  elaborate  mystery.     Once  the  hymn  was  recognised 
as  an  essential  element  of  such  an  act,  the  person  who 
could  interpret  the  hymn  and  explain  its  effects  acquired 
great  importance.     And  when  the  explanation  of  all  the 
various  features  of  the  sacrifice  was  once  begun,  a  wide 
door  was  opened  to  minute  ingenuity.     It  is  astonishing 
to  what  trifles  these  priestly  directories  descend,  what 
explanations  are  brought  from  every  part  of  earth  and 
heaven   of  the   most   trivial   circumstances,   and   what 
sacredness  is  found  in  the  very  blades  of  grass  around 
the  altar.     Now  the  effect  of  such  a  treatment  of  ritual 
is  inevitably  that  the  rite  itself,  the  outward  mechanical 
performance,  comes  to  be  regarded  as  important,  and 
that  the  ethical  and  religious  end  which  was  originally 
aimed  at,  is  lost  sight  of.     The  priest  and  those  he  acts 
for  are  so  intent  on  the  minutiae  of  their  celebration 
that  they  forget  about  the  god  it  is  intended  for.     And 
as  they  are  quite  convinced  that  the  sacrifice,  if  offered 
with  perfect  correctness  and  with  nothing  left  out,  must 
produce  its  effect,  the  sacrifice  itself  comes  to  appear  as 
the  agent  of  the  desired  blessing ;  the  god  grows  less 
but  the  sacrifice  grows  more.     This  process,  which  may 
be  observed  wherever  ritualism  exists,  was  carried  in  the 
period  of  Brahmanism  to  its  utmost  length.      In  this 
period  the  old  gods  lost  the  strong  hold  they  had  before 
over  the  people's  mind  ;   men  ceased  to  look  for  their 
gods  to  the  sky  or  to  the  tempest,  and  began  to  look 
instead  to  the  long  ceremonies  of  the  priest  or  to  the 
hymn  he  chanted  at  the  altar,  or  to  the  austerities  he 
practised.     Gods  of  a  new  type  now  make  their  appear- 
ance.     As  in  the  Vedic  period  we  saw  that  Brahma- 
naspati,  lord  of  prayer,  had  a  place  beside  Indra  and 
Varuna,  so  now  we  see  that  the  supreme  deity  is  named 
Brahma.     The  prayer  connected  with  the  sacrifice  has 
given  its  name  to  the  ruler  of  the   universe.      Other 
names  for  the  supreme  are  also  found  to  be  making 
their  way   to   general   use,   as   the   old   historical   and 
mythological   gods    fall   into   the  background,  and   an 


344  History  of  Religion  part  iv 

abstract  divine  unity  is  sought  after.  Prajapati,  lord 
of  creatures,  who  is  little  heard  of  in  the  hymns,  is 
frequently  invoked  as  the  head  of  all  the  gods,  and  a 
triad  of  gods  is  heard  of,  consisting  of  Agni,  Vayu, 
Surya,  fire,  the  air,  the  sun,  and  summing  up  the  divine 
energies.  The  attributes  of  the  gods  are  personified, 
and  a  set  of  pale  abstractions  is  thus  added  to  the 
Pantheon  ;  and  spirits  and  goblins  not  heard  of  in  the 
hymns,  though  not  therefore  necessarily  unknown  in 
the  former  period,  make  their  appearance.  These  are, 
perhaps,  the  gods  of  the  aborigines,  who  thus  revenge 
themselves,  as  the  religion  of  the  invaders  which  at  first 
suppressed  them  loses  its  earlier  vigour.  The  strong 
gods  retire  and  weak  gods,  many  and  shadowy,  and 
bad  as  well  as  good,  are  worshipped.  The  Asuras  were 
formerly  the  gods  generally,  now  they  are  evil  beings 
with  whom  the  good  gods  have  to  contend. 

3.  Practical  Life. — We  possess  very  complete  pictures 
of  Indian  life  and  manners  in  the  period  of  Brahmanism. 
Of  the  codes  of  ancient  sages  by  which  Hindu  society 
was  supposed  to  be  governed  many  are  extant  to  us  ; 
and  in  Mr.  Max  Miiller's  Sacred  Books  of  the  East  the 
English  reader  may  make  himself  acquainted  with 
several  of  these.  The  most  famous  and  the  longest, 
is  the  laws  of  Manu,  a  mythical  progenitor  of  mankind. 
In  the  form  in  which  we  have  it  this  work  dates  prob- 
ably from  the  second  century  A.D.,  but  the  body  of  the 
work  is  much  older.  Originally  a  local  collection  of 
rules,  it  extended  its  authority  gradually  over  the  entire 
Hindu  population  of  India.  With  other  collections,  also 
of  local  origin,  it  represents  to  us  the  condition  of  Indian 
society  after  the  caste  system  became  fixed  ;  but  much 
of  the  law  thus  handed  down  to  us  must  have  had  its 
origin  in  prehistoric  times. 

The  law  of  Manu  hinges  on  the  superiority  of  the 
Brahman  over  the  other  castes.  The  Brahmans  form 
the  centre  of  the  state  and  really  control  everything ; 
but  their  life,  in  turn,  is  framed  in  strict  rules,  and  their 


1 


CHAP.  XIX  Brahmanism  345 

whole  history  and  actions  are  laid  down  for  them  to 
the  last  detail  from  the  moment  of  their  birth.  The 
life  of  the  Brahman  is  divided  into  four  periods.  For 
a  quarter  of  his  life  he  is  a  student  living  with  a  teacHeF 
and  learning  from  him  the  sacred  knowledge  of  the 
Vedas.  Every  act  of  study  begins  with  the  so-called 
Savitri-verse,  "  Let  us  meditate  on  that  excellent  glory 
of  the  divine  Vivifier.  May  he  enlighten  our  under- 
standings." This  prayer,  with  the  mystic  syllable,  Om 
(thought  to  have  to  do  with  the  three  gods  of  a  triad, 
but  probably  the  original  meaning  is  Yes,  an  abstract 
all-embracing  yes,  in  which  nothing  but  pure  being  is 
affirmed),  is  repeated  at  every  return  to  study,  and  also 
with  great  frequency  at  other  times.  The  teacher  is 
more  to  the  student  than  his  father,  and  is  to  be  treated 
with  the  greatest  deference  and  courtesy  ;  these  years 
are  a  training  in  gentle  and  seemly  conduct  as  well 
as  in  law.  His  student  days  completed,  the  Brahman 
offers  his  first  sacrifice,  marries,  and  becomes  a  house- 
holder. Little  is  said  of  earning  a  living  ;  the  Brahman 
is  not  to  be  worldly,  but  he  is  to  be  independent  if  he 
can.  He  is,  however,  allowed  to  beg  if  in  want.  But 
more  stress  is  laid  on  the  continued  pursuit  of  know- 
ledge, and  on  the  domestic  sacrifices  to  gods  and  manes 
which  are  to  be  his  daily  care.  After  he  has  brought 
up  a  son  to  take  charge  of  his  house  and  goods,  the 
third  stage  of  his  life  is  reached  ;  he  may  retire  from 
the  world  and  become  a  recluse,  giving  himself  to  con- 
templation and  austerities.  The  fourth  stage  is  that  of 
the  ascetic,  bhikku  or  sannyasin,  the  aged  man  who 
having  given  up  all  possessions,  all  human  society,  and 
the  practice  of  all  rites,  and  subsisting  only  on  alms, 
seeks  to  purge  his  heart  of  all  desire  and  to  become 
united  by  deep  meditation  with  the  supreme  soul,  thus 
attaining  union  with  Brahma  and  final  liberation.  In 
this  section  of  the  laws  of  Manu  an  ideal  of  moral 
perfection  is  set  forth,  which  is  not  demanded  at  the 
earlier  stages  of  life. 


346  History  of  Religion  part  iv 

"  Let  him  not  desire  to  die  ;  let  him  not  desire  to  live ; 
let  him.  wait  for  his  time  as  a  servant  for  the  payment  of 
his  wages. 

"  Let  him  patiently  bear  hai'd  words,  let  him  not  insult 
any  one,  nor  become  any  one's  enemy  for  the  sake  of  this 
perishable  body.  Against  an  angry  man  let  hi-tn  not  in 
return  show  anger ;    let  him  bless  when  he  is  cursed!' 

He  is  to  be  sedulously  careful  not  to  injure  any  living 
creature,  he  is  to  meditate  on  the  supreme  soul  which  is 
present  in  all  organisms,  both  the  highest  and  the  lowest. 
He  is  to  give  up  all  attachments,  and  in  this  way,  as  his 
body  decays,  he  enters  even  here  into  a  state  of  perfect 
freedom  and  repose  and  union  with  the  great  spirit. 

Such  ideas  prove  that  the  mind  of  Brahmanism  was 
not  occupied  with  sacrifices  alone.  Manu  speaks  of  the 
superintendence  of  sacrifices  as  only  one  of  several  careers 
which  the  Brahman  might  choose ;  and  if  he  might  with 
equal  right  devote  himself  to  study  or  to  self-discipline, 
we  see  that  another  side  of  religion  than  that  directing 
itself  to  external  gods  or  occupying  itself  with  outward 
acts,  was  pressing  itself  forward.  The  inner  world  of 
the  mind  is  growing  larger  as  the  outward  gods  grow 
shadowy ;  it  is  being  found  that  salvation  may  be 
reached  by  inwards  efforts  as  well  as  by  outward  rites, 
that  the  search  for  wisdom  and  the  work  of  self-conquest, 
and  a  union  with  the  deity  which  is  quite  apart  from 
any  offering  or  from  any  form  of  worship,  also  lead  to 
salvation.  It  is  objected  to  the  ethics  of  Manu  that  the 
ideal  they  set  up  is  not  an  active  but  a  suffering  one ; 
the  ascetic  is  placed  on  a  higher  platform  than  the 
householder,  men  are  encouraged  to  withdraw  from  the 
performance  of  their  duties  in  the  family  and  in  society, 
and  to  devote  themselves  to  an  aim  which,  however 
lofty,  is  personal  and,  so  far,  selfish.  It  is  certainly  a 
weakness  in  the  religion  that  it  has  no  higher  aim  than 
this  to  set  before  its  most  eager  minds.  Apart  from 
this,  life  is  regulated  in  a  way  we  cannot  but  admire. 
Amid  the  mass  of  trivialities  and  formalities  in  which 


CHAP.  XIX  Brahmanism  347 

every  action  is  involved  there  breathes  a  grave  humane 
and  gentle  spirit,  and  a  sound  practical  morality,  and 
the  ordinary  household  of  the  Brahman  may  have 
been  a  scene  of  activity  and  cheerfulness.  The  Sudra, 
however,  is  spoken  of  everywhere  as  a  being  whose 
degradation  can  never  be  removed,  and  to  touch  whom 
is  to  be  defiled.  Those  who  belonged  to  no  caste  were 
in  a  still  worse  plight  and  lived  in  the  greatest  misery. 

4.  Philosophy. — We  have  seen  how  both  in  the  ritual 
system  they  administered  and  in  the  ideal  they  formed 
of  the  highest  good,  the  Brahmans  were  led  forward 
from  the  old  ground  of  the  Vedic  nature-worship  to  a 
more  inward  and  subjective  religious  attitude.  The 
exaltation  of  Brahma,  the  power  of  prayer,  to  be  the 
supreme  god,  was  an  advance  from  an  external  deity 
to  a  deity  both  external  and  present  in  man's  own 
experience ;  and  the  appearance  of  a  new  way  of  salva- 
tion, though  only  permitted  at  first  to  the  world-weary 
ascetic,  in  which  inner  contemplation  and  absorption  ( 
could  lead  to  the  highest  consummation  of  life,  also 
showed  that  a  new  form  of  religion  was  at  hand.  In 
the  philosophy  of  the  Brahmanic  period,  the  transition 
is  made  from  the  service  of  gods  external  to  man,  by ) 
the  mechanism  of  rites,  to  the  acknowledgment  of  a 
divine  being  with  whom  man  feels  himself  to  be  inwardly^ 
akin  and  to  whom  he  draws  near  by  his  own  spiritual 
effort.  In  this  movement,  to  which  we  learn  that 
members  of  the  lay  aristocracy  and  even  women  of 
intellectual  distinction  made  important  contributions, 
and  which  may  have  appeared  in  its  beginnings  as  a 
sceptical  revolt  against  their  own  system,  the  Brahmans 
yet  took  part,  and  the  works  in  which  the  record  of 
it  is  contained  became  a  part  of  revelation.  The 
"  Upanishads  "  or  "  communicated  doctrines,"  form  the 
third  branch  of  the  sacred  knowledge,  and  much  of 
this  literature  belongs  to  the  period  before  Buddhism. 
These  books  are  read  still  by  the  educated  Hindu  as 
part  of  scripture,  and  the  philosophy  of  them  is  a  part 


348  History  of  Religion  part  iv 

of  his  religion.  We  can  only  point  out  the  principal 
terms  and  notions  of  that  philosophy. 

Seeking  to  escape  from  the  confusion  of  many  gods 
the  Indian  mind  is  looking  out  even  from  the  Vedic 
period  for  some  means  to  conceive  of  them  all  as  one. 
In  the  earliest  period  each  reigned  in  turn  as  the 
supreme  ;  a  god  is  supreme  not  because  he  is  essentially 
the  greatest  of  the  gods,  but  because  circumstances 
have  brought  him  to  the  front.  This  is  Henotheism. 
Then  we  have  attempts  to  sum  them  all  up  in  one 
expression.  Prajapati,  lord  of  creatures,  Visvakarman, 
maker  of  all  things,  represent  such  attempts.  Then 
we  have  as  the  supreme,  Brahma,  the  power  of  prayer,^ 
a  being  of  a  different  character  from  all  his  predecessors. 
Brahma  is  an  intellectual  deity.  He  is  a  thinker,  a 
knower,  he  is  the  "  Mahan  Atma  "  or  great  spirit,  which 
sits  in  unbroken  calm  above  the  change  and  distraction 
of  the  universe.  In  rendering  Mahan  Atma  by  great 
spirit,  however,  we  are  anticipating.  Atma,  originally 
breath  or  life,  comes,  afterwards,  to  mean  the  person, 
the  self  when  all  that  is  accidental  is  removed  from  it, 
the  essential,  innermost  self.  Now  Brahma  is  the  great 
self,  the  inmost  essence  of  all  things,  which  was  before 
them,  and  is  unaffected  by  their  changes.  But  man 
also  has  an  atma,  a  self;  it  may  be  very  small  and 
lodge  in  a  part  of  the  body  where  it  cannot  be  detected, 
but  it  is  there,  and  the  small  atma  is  the  same  as  the 
great  one.  By  what  physiological  doctrines  this  is  up- 
held, cannot  here  be  traced  ;  but  the  notion  of  the  atma, 
the  great  form  of  which  in  Brahma  is  identical  with  its 
small  form  in  man,  lies  at  the  basis  of  Brahmanic  thought. 

In  Brahma  one  god  has  been  reached,  but  he  has 
been  reached  by  thinking  away  from  him  everything 
concrete.  All  predicates  are  unsuitable  to  him,  as  any 
predicate  implies  a  limitation  ;  he  can  only  be  described 
in   negatives,   or   in   questionable    metaphors.      He   is 

*  On  the  etymology  of  Brahma  see  Mr.  Max  Miiller's  Hibbert  Leclures, 
p.  366. 


CHAP.  XIX  Brahmanism  349 

meant  to  satisfy  the  religious  craving  for  a  being  quite 
free  from  any  imperfection  and  entirely  supreme — and 
it  is  the  penalty  of  this  that  he  has  no  clear  outline  or 
character.  And  how  indeed  is  he  to  be  related  to  the 
world  }  This  world  of  change  and  decay,  of  disappoint- 
ment and  sorrow,  what  has  the  perfect  being  to  do  with 
that  ?  Did  he  make  it,  and  is  he  responsible  for  it  ? 
The  answer  to  this  in  Hindu  thought  is  that  the  world 
is  due  to  Maya,  illusion.  It  was  due  to  an  aberration 
in  Brahma,  which  is  represented  in  various  ways,  that 
the  transition  was  made  from  the  one  to  the  many,  and 
this  error  has  been  productive  of  all  that  has  been 
suffered  on  the  earth.  Or  else  it  is  held  that  it  was  not 
Brahma  who  became  subject  to  illusion,  but  that  the 
illusion  resides  in  man's  views  and  thoughts  about  the 
world  ;  and  if  a  man  could  free  himself  from  the  meshes 
of  Maya  by  recognising  that  the  world  is  an  illusion, 
and  that  nothing  exists  but  Brahma  only,  then  he 
would  have  done  something  for  his  own  emancipation, 
the  Brahma  in  him  would  be  free  from  illusion,  and  he 
would  also  have  done  something,  though  little,  for  the 
salvation  of  the  world  from  its  great  error. 

That  the  whole  world-process  is  nothing  but  an 
illusion,  a  confused  and  troubled  dream  passing  over 
the  mind  of  Brahma,  who  himself  alone  is  real,  this 
is  the  cardinal  doctrine  of  Brahmanism,  from  which 
Buddhism  also,  as  we  shall  see,  sets  out  The  world 
is  really  nothing  but  an  apparent  world  ;  and  the  true 
wisdom,  the  only  salvation  consists  in  knowing  this, 
and  in  living  a  life  in  accordance  with  that  knowledge. 
The  wise  man  should  regard  a  world  which  he  knows 
to  be  illusion,  with  complete  indifference ;  it  can  do 
nothing  to  him,  he  can  do  nothing  for  it ;  it  affects  him 
only  with  an  ineradicable  regret  that  it  exists  at  all, 
and  with  a  longing  for  its  disappearance.  The  practical 
outcome  of  the  state  of  matters  which  he  recognises  is 
firstly  negative,  that  he  must  not  allow  the  world  to 
influence   him   at   all,  and,  secondly,  positive,  that  he 


350  History  of  Religion  part  iv 

must  strive  to  be  united  with  Brahma.  The  negative 
task  is  performed  by  withdrawing  the  mind  from  all 
particular  things,  and  letting  it  be  filled  with  the  general, 
the  absolute  alone ;  and  similarly  by  forbidding  the 
desires  to  fasten  on  any  worldly  objects,  by  extinguish- 
ing desire  and  ceasing  to  be  affected  in  any  way  by 
worldly  things.  The  positive  task  is  performed  by 
means  of  a  mental  process  which  we  cannot  here 
describe,  but  by  which  the  mind  returns  to  the  self 
that  is  within  and  realises  it  as  it  is,  cleared  from  all 
particular  thoughts  and  affections.  These  exercises 
cannot  be  called  moral ;  where  all  is  illusion  morality 
disappears.  There  is  no  good,  no  evil,  no  effort  to 
promote  the  good  and  lessen  the  evil.  It  is  not  because 
the  world  is  bad  that  it  is  condemned,  but  because  it 
exists.  The  energy  which  in  other  faiths  is  devoted 
to  a  moral  struggle,  is  here  poured  into  the  ascetic 
discipline  by  which  the  individual  looks  to  escape 
1  altogether  from  the  world  as  it  is.  There  are  no  good 
I  works,  what  is  good  is  to  abstain  from  all  works  ;  there 
is  no  benevolence  further  than  that  the  mind  must  be 
kept  clear  of  all  that  confuses  or  degrades  ;  the  salva- 
tion of  the  individual  alone  is  sought  after  ;  there  is  no 
desire  to  spread  the  light  and  save  others,  since  few 
are  capable  of  that  knowledge  of  the  illusive  nature  of 
all  things  by  which  alone  salvation  is  possible. 

This,  it  is  plain,  could  never  be  a  popular  religion. 
,  Brahma,   the    abstract    one,   does    not    appeal    to   the 
imagination  ;  he  could  not  drive  out  the  popular  nature- 
gods   with   their  definite   myths  and    attributes.     Nor 
could    a    religion    spread    among    the    people,   which 
regarded  the  social  and  the  domestic  state  as  inferior, 
.  and  could  only  be  practised  by  one  who  had  left  his 
r  home    and    family.     The    hermits    and    ascetics    and 
begging   monks   may   form   the   religious   aristocracy ; 
but   a   teaching   of  a   different   nature   was   necessary 
for  the  people.     And  we   find,  in   fact,   two   religions 
prevailing  in  India  in  the  period  of  Brahmanism  ;  that 


CHAP.  XIX  Brahmanism  351 

which  we  have  described  for  the  enlightened,  who 
escapes  in  it  from  all  law,  all  creed,  all  ritual,  whose 
whole  religion  more  than  any  other  which  ever  flourished 
in  the  world  is  within  the  mind  ;  ^  and  on  the  other 
hand,  a  religion  in  which  outward  gods  are  worshipped, 
an  outward  law  enforced  which  is  counted  sacred 
because  a  god  or  gods  inspired  it,  and  in  which 
superstitions  gathered  from  all  quarters  find  shelter. 
The  higher  religion  by  no  means  killed  the  lower  one, 
as  we  see  in  India  to  this  day.  On  the  contrary,  the 
withdrawal  of  the  higher  religion  of  the  country  to 
a  region  whither  the  people  could  not  follow,  left  the 
religion  of  the  people  to  sink  into  a  degradation 
unknown  before.  One  doctrine  must  here  be  noticed. 
The  belief  in  transmig'ration  which  Buddhism  received 
from  the  religion  it  found  existing  in  India,  does  not 
belong  to  the  higher  thought  of  Brahmanism  described 
in  this  section ;  the  atman  or  self,  which  is  identical 
with  the  supreme  self,  belongs  to  quite  a  different  order 
of  thought  from  the  soul  which  was  formerly  in  some 
one  else,  is  now  in  me,  and  may  yet  come  to  be  in 
many  another  being.  The  doctrine  is  thought  to  have 
been  an  importation  into  India  about  the  time  we 
are  speaking  of.  It  admits  of  being  made  a  powerful 
deterrent  from  vice  and  incentive  to  virtue.  If  my 
present  sufferings  are  due  not  to  my  acts,  but  to  the 
acts  of  the  person  in  whom  my  soul  dwelt  before,  it 
is  possible  for  me  so  to  act  that  my  soul's  future 
existence  may  be  better  and  not  worse  than  this  one, 
and  that  it  shall  not  sink  but  rise  in  the  order  of  beings, 
and  draw  nearer  to  its  final  deliverance.  Of  this  we 
shall  hear  more  in  connection  with  Buddhism. 

The  further  development  of  Indian  religion,  apart 
from  Buddhism,  is  in  two  directions.  There  is  a 
philosophical  movement,  in  which  the  Brahmanic  ideas 
on  God,  the  world,  the  soul  and  its  changes,  are  further 

1  "From  the  standpoint  of  unity  witli  Brahma,  the  gods  are  no  gods, 
the  Vedas  no-Vedas." 


352  History  of  Religion  part  iv 

worked  out,  and  which  leads  to  the  six  schools  of  Hindu 
philosophy.  On  the  other  hand,  the  gods  have  their 
history.  Brahma  remains  the  great  god,  but  as  his 
character  is  so  undefined  he  is  little  worshipped.  Indra, 
the  old  national  god,  yields  to  Vishnu,  the  old  sun-god 
of  the  three  steps  (heaven,  the  air,  the  earth),  who 
becomes  the  favourite  deity.  The  stern  and  destructive 
S'iva  is  a  new  figure,  and  seems  to  be  partly  an  adapta- 
tion of  a  god  of  the  savage  aborigines  :  his  worship 
is  the  most  fanatical.  These  three,  the  Creator,  the 
Upholder,  and  the  Destroyer,  form  the  Trimurti,  or 
divine  trinity  of  India, — a  trinity  arrived  at  not  by 
unfolding  the  riches  of  the  one  great  god,  but  by  com- 
pounding the  claims  of  three  gods  who  were  rivals. 
The  doctrine  of  incarnation  is  also  found  here.  Vishnu 
has  ten  avatars  or  incarnations  in  human  form ;  he 
comes  down  to  the  earth  when  there  is  a  special  reason 
for  his  interference.  In  these  avatars,  especially  in 
Krishna,  the  dark  god,  whose  exploits  as  a  hero  are  told 
^  in  the  great  epic  the  Mahabharata,  the  need  is  to  some 
extent  met,  of  which  both  Buddhism  and  Christianity 
lay  hold,  of  a  divine  figure  who  is  not  too  far  away  from 
man,  and  who  can  be  regarded  with  personal  affection. 

Books  Recommended 

Most  of  the  books  mentioned  at  the  end  of  last  chapter  deal  also  with 

Brahmanism. 
Of  the  Brahmanic  literature  given  in  the  Sacred  Books  of  the  East,  the 
following  may  be  mentioned  : — 

Vols.  i.  and  xv.  Upanishads. 

Vols.  ii.  and  xiv.  Sacred  Laws  of  the  Aryas. 

Vol.  vii.     The  Institutes  of  Vishnu. 

Vols,    xii.,    xxvi.,    and    xli.      The    Satapatha  -  Brahmana    (Sacrificial 
Rituals). 

Vol.  XXV.  Manu. 

Vols,  xxix.,  and  xxx.    Grihya-Sutias  (Domestic  Ceremonies). 

Vol.  xxxiv.  Vedic  Hymns,     xlvi.  Hymns  to  Agni. 

Vols,  xlii.-xliv.  Hymns  of  the  Atharva-Veda. 

Vols,  xxxiv.,  xxxviii.,  xlviii.  Vedanta  Sutras. 
Mulr's  Sanscrit  Texts. 
Weber,  Indische  Skizzen. 
Ilaug,  Ailareya  Biahmana. 


CHAPTER   XX 

INDIA 
III.  Btcddhism 

In  Buddhism  the  great  movement  of  Indian  religion 
works  itself  out  to  its  ultimate  conclusion  and  reaches 
a  stage  beyond  which  there  can  be  no  advance.  Here 
we  have  a  religion,  if  such  it  may  be  called,  without 
a  god,  without  prayer,  without  priesthood  or  worship  ; 
a  religion  which  owes  its  great  success,  not  to  its 
theology,  nor  to  its  ritual,  since  it  has  neither,  but  to 
its  moral  sentiment  and  to  its  external  organisation. 
Originating  in  the  centre  of  India,  and  giving  practical 
form  to  Indian  ideas,  it  spread  rapidly  and  widely 
both  in  the  country  of  its  birth  and  in  neighbouring 
lands.  It  is  now  extinct  in  India,  yet  it  numbers 
more  adherents  than  any  other  religion.  It  has  been 
divided  since  the  Christian  era  into  two  great  branches. 
Southern  Buddhism  is  the  religion  of  Ceylon,  of  Burmah, 
and  of  Siam  ;  while  Northern  Buddhism  extends  over 
Tibet,  China,  and  Japan,  and  the  islands  of  Java  and 
Sumatra. 

The  Literature. — These  two  branches  of  Buddhism 
have  different  literary  traditions,  though  some  works 
are  common  to  both ;  and  these  literatures,  differing 
from  each  other  in  language,  also  differ  widely  in 
contents  and  in  spirit.  The  southern  tradition,  com- 
posed  in    Pali,   the  literary   language   of  Ceylon,   has 

2  353 


354  History  of  Religion  part  iv 

recently  been  opened  up  to  scholars,  and  has  greatly 
changed  their  views  of  the  origin  and  the  true  nature 
of  this  religion.  The  Canon  of  Southern  Buddhism, 
which  we  might  call  the  Pali  Bible,  is  a  literature 
about  twice  as  large  as  the  Bible  of  Europe,  although 
if  the  repetitions  in  it  were  removed,  it  would  be  some- 
what smaller  than  the  Bible.  It  consists  of  three 
Pitakas,  baskets  or  collections.  The  first  is  the  Vinaya 
Pitaka,  dealing  with  discipline,  but  including  the 
Mahavagga,  a  history  of  the  first  beginnings  of  the 
order  as  the  founder  gathered  it  around  him.  The 
second  is  the  Sutta  Pitaka  or  collection  of  teachings. 
It  contains  the  earliest  account  of  the  later  life  of  the 
founder,  books  of  meditation  and  devotion,  collections 
of  sayings  by  the  Master,  poems,  fairy  tales,  and  fables, 
stories  about  Buddhist  saints,  and  so  on.  The  third 
collection,  the  Abidhamma,  contains  speculations  and 
discussions  on  various  subjects.  Much  of  these  materials 
is  not  peculiar  to  Buddhism,  there  is  much  pre-Buddhistic 
speculation,  and  there  are  many  stories  which  are  not 
peculiar  even  to  India.  Along  with  all  this,  however, 
the  books  give  us  the  earliest  accounts  of  the  life 
and  of  the  death  of  the  founder,  and  contain  a  repre- 
sentation written  a  century  after  his  death,  of  what 
he  was  considered  to  have  taught.  The  founder  him- 
self wrote  nothing ;  but  the  work  of  composing  books 
about  him  and  his  doctrine  began  early,  and  much  of 
the  canon  is  considered,  especially  by  English  scholars, 
to  have  been  in  existence  during  the  first  Buddhist 
century.^  For  many  centuries  they  were  preserved 
by  memory  alone. 

^  The  Buddhist  literature  given  in  the  Sacred  Books  of  the  East  is  as 
follows : 

Vol.  X.  The  Dhammapada,  containing  the  quintessence  of  Buddhist 
morality,  and  the  Sutta-nipata,  giving  teachings  of  Buddha  on 
religion. 

Vol.  xi.  Buddhist  Suttas.  Religious,  moral,  and  philosophical  dis- 
courses.    Vol.  xlix.     Buddhist  Mahayana  Sutras. 

Vol.  xiii.     Vinaya  Texts.     The  Patimokha  or  order  of  discipline,  and 


CHAP.  XX  Buddhism  355 

Was  there  a  Personal  Founder? — Senart  in  his 
Essai  sur  la  Ugende  du  Buddha,  and  Kern  in  his  Het 
Buddhisme  in  Indie,  both  hold  that  we  have  here  to 
do  with  a  sun-myth,  and  interpret  the  various  features 
of  the  legend  in  a  vjery  ingenious  way  in  accordance 
with  that  theory.  This  view  has  made  few  converts. 
Many  incidents  in  the  story  are  natural,  and  appear 
to  be  due  to  a  real  tradition  ;  there  is  literary  evidence 
of  the  early  existence  of  the  books,  and  the  religion 
can  be  best  understood  if  regarded  as  the  work  of 
a  real  personality  of  commanding  greatness.^ 

Scholars,  however,  are  agreed  as  to  the  difficulty  of 
drawing  the  line  between  what  is  history  and  what 
is  legend.  Even  in  the  early  Pali  accounts  the  hero 
has  become  a  religious  figure,  he  wears  titles  which 
lift  him  above  mankind,  and  he  has  supernatural  powers 
at  his  command.  A  laborious  critical  process  must  be 
undertaken,  comparing  the  various  narratives  with  each 
other  and  testing  them  in  other  ways,  before  the  real 
history  can  be  regarded  as  made  out  beyond  question. 
The  slight  sketch  of  the  story  which  we  give  does  not 
aim  at  such  critical  correctness  ;  we  merely  indicate 
the  outline  of  a  narrative  which  is  one  of  the  principal 
sources  of  the  strength  of  the  religion. 

the  beginning  of  the  Mahavagga,  containing  an  account  of  the 
opening  of  the  ministry  of  the  founder. 

Vol.  xvii.  Vinaya  Texts  ii.  Mahavagga  continued.  Kullavagga 
or  discipline  as  established  by  the  Master. 

Vol.  XX.     Kullavagga  continued. 

Vols,  xxii.,  xlv.  contain  Suttas  of  the  religion  of  the  Jainas. 

Vols.  XXXV.,  xxxvi.     Questions  of  King  Milinda. 

^  Recent  archaeological  discoveries,  of  which  an  account  is  given  by 
Mr.  Rhys  Davids  in  the  Century  Magazine,  April  1902,  place  it  beyond 
doubt  that  the  Buddha  really  existed,  and  that  pious  offices  were  paid 
to  his  ashes  after  his  cremation  by  the  members  of  his  own  clan  as  well 
as  by  others.  Inscriptions  brought  to  light  in  1898  show  that  the  Sakhya 
clan,  of  which  he  was  a  member,  dwelt  at  the  time  of  his  death  in  what  is 
now  a  frontier  district  of  Nepal.  Three  years  before  that  event  they  were 
driven  from  their  old  capital  Kapilavastu ;  but  they  formed  a  new  one 
fifteen  miles  further  south,  just  beyond  the  present  frontier  of  Nepal,  and 
there  they  erected  a  stupn  or  massive  stone  cairn,  to  guard  the  portion  of 
the  ashes  of  the  Buddha  which  was  committed  to  tlicir  keeping. 


356  History  of  Religion  part  iv 

The  Story  of  the  Founder, — The  founder's  family 
name  was  Gautama,  and  by  that  name  he  was  com- 
monly known  during  his  lifetime.  The  personal  name 
given  him  as  a  child  was  Siddartha.  Those  who  wished 
after  his  death  to  speak  of  him  with  reverence  called 
him  Sakya-Muni,  the  Sage  of  the  Sakyas.  These  were 
a  tribe  who  dwelt,  at  the  period  of  the  story,  i.e.  half  a 
millennium  before  Christ,  in  the  country  to  the  north 
of  the  sacred  Ganges,  a  few  days'  journey  from  the  city 
of  Benares.  Gautama's  father,  Suddhodana,  was  rajah 
(chief)  of  the  Sakyas  ;  his  residence  was  Kapilavastu, 
near  Oude.  The  future  sage  thus  belonged  to  the 
Kshatriya  class,  and  was  accustomed  to  a  position  of 
rank  and  ease.  We  hear  little  of  his  youth ;  he  had 
been  married  ten  years,  and  his  wife,  whom  he  loved, 
had  just  brought  him  a  son,  when,  at  the  age  of  twenty- 
nine,  he  suddenly  and  secretly  left  his  home  to  devote 
himself  to  the  religious  life.  He  was  led  to  this  step 
by  witnessing  various  painful  sights  which  caused  him 
vividly  to  realise  the  suffering  which  accompanies  all 
existence,  and  made  him  scorn  a  life  of  luxury.  It  was 
a  time  when  many  were  seeking  a  better  way,  and  when 
a  superior  mind  naturally  turned  to  that  retirement  and 
absorption  in  which  it  was  believed  that  the  key  to  life's 
pains  and  mysteries  was  to  be  found.  In  the  "  Great 
Renunciation,"  as  this  act  is  called,  there  is  nothing 
we  cannot  understand.  This  lofty  act,  however,  was 
followed  by  a  temptation ;  Mara,  the  spirit  of  evil, 
urged  him,  but  urged  him  in  vain,  to  give  up  the 
purpose  he  had  formed.  He  then  attached  himself 
to  Brahmanic  ascetics,  from  whom  he  learned  their 
philosophy ;  and  after  this  he  devoted  himself  for  six 
years  to  a  life  of  fasting  and  penance,  the  Brahmanic 
method  for  drawing  nearer  the  goal  of  the  religious 
life.  After  this  period  he  gave  up  his  fasting,  not 
having  profited  by  it  as  he  had  expected,  and  returned 
to  an  ordinary  diet.  This  change  cost  him  the  adhesion 
of  five  disciples  who  had  become  attached  to  him,  and 


CHAP.  XX  Bitddhism  357 

had  been  filled  with  wonder  at  his  mortifications.  But 
the  loss  was  a  small  one  compared  with  the  gain  which 
was  at  hand.  After  a  second  great  spiritual  struggle 
and  a  renewal  of  the  temptation,  he  at  last  reached 
that  which  he  had  long  been  seeking.  Seated  under 
a  ficus  religiosa,  the  tree  afterwards  called  the  tree  of 
knowledge,  or  the  Bo-tree,  he  rose  in  contemplation 
above  all  his  temptations  and  doubts  till  he  beheld 
at  length  the  true  nature  of  things.  From  this  moment 
he  was  Buddha,  Enlightened  ;  he  had  the  key  of  truth, 
and  for  himself  he  was  assured  that  sorrow  and  evil 
had  lost  all  hold  on  him.  His  doctrine  had  dawned 
in  his  mind.  He  had  discovered  the  cause  of  the 
sorrow  which  is  so  closely  intertwined  in  man's  life, 
and  had  divined  the  way  in  which  sorrow  might  be 
overcome.  The  method  had  been  found  by  which  one 
could  escape  from  the  unending  succession  of  new  lives, 
all  painful,  to  which,  according  to  the  general  belief 
of  the  time,  men  were  condemned.  The  words  placed 
in  the  mouth  of  the  founder  when  he  attained  to 
Buddhahood  tell  their  own  tale.  "  Looking  for  the 
Maker  of  this  tabernacle,  I  have  to  run  through  a 
course  of  many  births  so  long  as  I  do  not  find  him  ; 
and  painful  is  birth  again  and  again.  But  now.  Maker 
of  the  tabernacle,  thou  hast  been  seen  ;  thou  shalt  not 
make  up  this  tabernacle  again.  All  thy  rafters  arc 
broken;  thy  ridge-pole  is  sundered;  the  mind,  approach- 
ing the  eternal,  has  attained  to  the  extinction  of  all 
desires."^ 

The  great  discovery  being  made,  and  duly  pondered 
and  realised,  the  question  arose.  What  was  to  be  done 
with  it  ?  The  Buddha  shrinks  from  the  work  of  preach- 
ing it  to  others.  Brahma  himself  is  brought  into  the 
story  to  encourage  him  to  make  his  secret  known  to 
others,  and  to  assure  him  that  many  will  receive  it 
with  great  joy.  The  Blessed  One  consents,  and  thus 
replies:   "Wide  open  is  the  gate  of  the  Immortal  to 

^  Dhammapada,  S.  B.  E.  x.  42. 


358  Histojy  of  Religion  part  iv 

all  who  have  ears  to  hear ;  let  them  send  forth  faith 
to  meet  it.     The  teaching  is  sweet  and  good  ;  because 
I  despaired  of  the  task,  I  spake  not  to  men  before."  ^ 
He  turns   his   steps,  guided   by  his  own  supernatural 
knowledge,  to    the    city    of  Benares,   to    seek   the   five 
monks   who   had   formerly   abandoned   him.      On   his 
way  thither   he  meets   a  naked  ascetic  who  asks  the 
reason  of  his  cheerful  mien  ;   he  answers  that  he  has 
overcome   all    foes,  has   reached   emancipation  by  the 
destruction  of  desire,  and  has  obtained  Nirvana.     "  To 
found  the  kingdom  of  Truth  I   go  to  the  city  of  the 
Kasis  (Benares);  I  will  beat  the  drum  of  the  Immortal 
in   the  darkness    of  this   world."     The    account  which 
follows  of  the  opening  of  the  "kingdom  of  righteous- 
ness "  presents  many  analogies  to*  the  early  stages  of 
other   spiritual   movements.     The   founder,  immovably 
sure  of  himself  and  of  his  doctrines,  goes   from   place 
to    place,   spending    the    rainy    season    in    town,   and 
preaching   everywhere.       It    is    at    Benares    that    the 
"  wheel  of  the  law  "  is  first  set  in  motion ;   there  the 
first  sermon  was  preached.     The  circumstances  are  also 
narrated    under  which   other   sermons   were  delivered, 
details  being  given  as  to  time,  place,  the  persons  who 
heard  them,  the  incidents  which  occasioned  them.     His 
converts  at  first  are  few  and  their  names  are  recorded, 
but   by  degrees   they   become    more   numerous.      The 
more  devoted  of  them  become  members  of  his  order, 
Bhikkus    (for    Bhikshus),    mendicants ;     they    forsake 
domestic  life,  shave  their  heads,  adopt  the  yellow  dress 
and  the  alms-bowl.     They  also  are  sent  out  to  preach. 
"  Go    ye,  O    Bhikkus,  and  wander,  for  the  welfare  of 
many,  out  of  compassion  for  the  world,  for  the  gain 
and  for  the  welfare  of  gods  and  men.     Let  not  two  of 
you  go  the  same  way.     Preach,  O  Bhikkus,  the  doctrine 
which   is   glorious    in    the   beginning,   glorious   in   the 
middle,  glorious  in  the  end,  in  the  spirit,  and  in  the 
letter ;   proclaim  a  consummate,  perfect,  and  pure  life 
*  Mahavagga,  S.  B,  E.  xiii,  88, 


CHAP.  XX  Buddhism  359 

of  holiness.  There  are  beings  whose  mental  eyes  are 
covered  with  scarcely  any  dust,  but  if  the  doctrine  is 
not  preached  to  them  they  cannot  attain  salvation." 
The  incidents  narrated  in  this  part  of  the  story  are 
mostly  connected  with  persons  seeking  admission  to 
the  order,  or  persons  requiring  to  be  convinced ;  the 
doctrine  and  its  spread  are  everything.  That  spread 
takes  place,  as  it  is  desired  by  the  Buddha,  chiefly 
among  the  higher  classes  of  society ;  a  great  triumph 
is  reached  when  Bimbisara,  king  of  Magadha,  becomes 
a  patron  of  the  order,  and  some  accounts  tell  of  the 
conversion  of  the  Buddha's  own  father  and  mother. 
The  work  of  the  mission  is  of  a  peaceful  nature ;  the 
Buddha  lives  on  good  terms  with  the  Brahmans  and 
with  other  teachers  and  their  pupils.  The  only  for- 
midable opposition  he  had  to  meet  arose  within  the 
order.  His  cousin  Dewadatta,  who  had  become  a  monk, 
wished  to  found  a  new  order  with  much  stricter  rules 
than  those  of  the  original  one.  The  Buddha  refused 
to  attach  importance,  as  was  proposed,  to  matters  of 
clothes  and  food,  or  living  in  the  open  air ;  to  do  so 
would  have  made  his  movement  narrower  and  less 
universal  than  he  desired. 

The  beginning  of  the  ministry  is  told  in  some  detail, 
but  of  a  long  period  of  the  life  only  a  few  scattered 
incidents  are  given.  There  is  a  detailed  account  of 
the  three  last  months  of  the  life.  The  Buddha  is  now 
eighty  years  of  age,  and  in  the  Maha-paranibbana 
Sutta^  the  tale  of  his  migrations  and  preachings  is 
carried  on  according  to  the  same  scheme  as  in  the 
accounts  of  his  early  days.  During  the  rainy  season, 
however,  when  he  has  reached  the  age  of  eighty,  he 
has  an  illness,  and  sees  he  cannot  live  long.  This  he 
tells  his  monks,  exhorting  them  with  urgency  to  be 
true  to  the  teaching  and  the  order,  and  to  shed  the 
light  abroad.  His  end  is  hastened  by  a  meal  of  pork 
set  before   him  by  a  goldsmith,  a  man  of  low  caste, 

1  s.  B.  E.  vol.  xl. 


360  History  of  Religion  part  iv 

who  hospitably  entertained  him.  After  this  his  face 
shines  with  a  heavenly  radiance,  and  as  the  end 
approaches  many  heavenly  signs  appear.  The  Buddha 
is  fully  conscious  that  he  is  about  to  leave  the  world, 
and  that  his  death  is  an  event  of  supreme  interest  to 
the  heavenly  powers,  whom  he  believes  to  be  thronging 
around  to  watch  his  last  hours.  He  is  solicitous,  how- 
ever, to  soothe  the  grief  of  his  friends,  large  numbers 
of  whom  also  are  around  him,  and  to  give  them  such 
counsels  and  such  incentives  to  a  faithful  upholding  of 
the  cause  as  he  yet  may.  They  ask  about  his  obsequies, 
and  he  claims  that  the  remains  of  such  an  one  as  he 
is,  of  a  Tathagata,  "  one  who  has  attained  perfection," 
should  be  treated  as  men  treat  the  remains  of  a  king 
of  kings.  He  recognises  the  kindness  of  Ananda,  his 
most  intimate  disciple,  and  tries  to  comfort  him  by 
encouraging  him  to  be  earnest  in  effort,  so  that  he 
too  may  soon  be  free  from  evils.  He  directs  his 
disciples  generally  not  to  mourn  too  much  at  his  re- 
moval as  if  they  were  being  deserted.  The  truths 
which  he  has  set  forth,  and  the  rules  of  the  order  he 
has  laid  down  for  them,  are  to  be  their  teacher  after 
he  is  gone.  He  asks  if  any  of  them  has  any  doubt 
or  misgiving  as  to  the  Buddha,  or  the  truth,  or  the  faith, 
or  the  way.  If  so,  they  are  to  inquire  freely,  so  that 
they  may  not  reproach  themselves  afterwards  for  not 
having  consulted  him  while  still  among  them.  The 
brethren,  however,  are  silent,  though  addressed  again 
and  again  in  the  same  way.  In  the  whole  assembly 
there  is  not  one  who  has  any  doubt  or  misgiving. 
Even  the  most  backward  of  these  brethren  has  become 
converted  (lit.  "entered  into  the  current");  he  is  no 
longer  liable  to  be  born  to  a  state  of  suffering,  but  is 
assured  of  eternal  salvation. 

"  Then  the  Blessed  One  addressed  the  brethren  and 
said,  '  Behold  now,  brethren,  I  exhort  you,'  saying, 
'Decay  is  inherent  in  all  things  tljat  have  come  into 
being.     Work  out  your  salvation  with  diligence  ! ' 


CHAP.  XX  Btiddliism  361 

"  This  was  the  last  word  of  the  Tathagata  ! " 
His    death    or    Nirvana    forms    the  era  of  Buddhist 
chronology,  and  the  date  has  now  been  approximately 
fixed  with  some  certainty  ;  it  took  place  somewhere  in 
the  decade  482-472  B.C. 

Is  Buddhism  a  Revolt  against  Brahmanism  ? — 
Before  proceeding  to  discuss  the  religion  to  which  this 
somewhat  monkish  narrative  forms  the  preface,  it  is 
necessary  to  say  a  few  words  on  the  relation  which 
that  religion  is  now  supposed  to  hold  to  the  general 
history  of  Indian  piety.  It  was  customary,  till  recently, 
to  regard  Buddha  as  a  great  reformer,  and  his  religion 
as  a  great  revolt  against  that  which  it  found  prevailing 
in  India.  He  is  credited  with  having  preached  atheism 
as  a  reaction  against  the  burdensome  worship  of  too 
many  gods,  with  having  instituted  a  great  social  move- 
ment consisting  in  the  abolition  of  caste,  with  having 
openly  denied  the  authority  of  the  Vedas,  till  then 
unchallenged,  and  with  having  rebuked  the  pride  of 
Brahmanism  by  making  his  order  of  mendicants  the 
representatives  of  his  religion.  None  of  these  asser- 
tions can  now  be  upheld.  Instead  of  having  been  a 
tremendous  reaction  against  Brahmanism  it  is  seen 
that  Buddhism  was  the  natural  outgrowth  of  that 
system.  The  closer  knowledge  of  both,  gained  by  the 
opening  up  of  the  sacred  books  of  India,  tends  to  show 
that  much  that  was  formerly  thought  distinctive  of 
Buddhism  was  in  reality  inherited  from  Brahmanism. 
We  saw  in  dealing  with  the  earlier  form  of  Indian 
religion  that  a  form  of  piety  had  been  struck  out  in 
it  which  made  the  ascetic  independent  of  sacrifice, 
priesthood,  even  of  the  gods,  all  save  the  one  God 
who  is  in  all  things.  In  that  phase  of  Indian  religion 
the  authority  of  the  Vedas  had  already  been  impugned, 
an  inner  discipline  had  taken  the  place  of  outward  wor- 
ship, the  saint  had  learned  to  forsake  the  world.  This 
turn  of  religious  thought  produced  all  the  phenomena 
of   Buddhism   before    the   period    of  Gautama.      The 


3^2  History  of  Religion  part  iv 

sannyasin  {vide  sup.,  p.  345)  of  Brahmanism  is  also 
called  bhikku,  mendicant;  the  rules  of  the  older 
ascetics  are  closely  similar  to  those  of  the  Buddhist 
monk ;  their  very  outfit,  their  cloak  and  alms-bowl, 
are  the  same, 

A  circumstance  which  shows  very  clearly  how  far 
Buddhism  was  from  bearing  the  character  of  a  revolt, 
is  the  occurrence  at  the  same  time  and  in  the  same 
district  of  India  of  another  movement  of  a  very  simi- 
lar nature.  Jainism  is  an  Indian  religion  so  like 
Buddhism  as  to  have  been  considered  by  many  to 
be  a  sect  of  the  latter.  It  also  has  an  order  of 
monks  with  robes  and  with  a  rule  like  those  of  the 
Buddhist  fraternity.  It  also  has  a  human  founder 
on  whom  many  of  the  same  titles  are  conferred  as 
on  Gautama,  and  who  is  afterwards  deified  and  wor- 
shipped. Mahavira,  the  founder  of  Jainism,  is,  like 
Gautama,  the  son  of  a  royal  house ;  and  the  Jainist 
and  the  Buddhist  legend  have  many  features  in 
common.  Was  the  legend  of  Mahavira,  then,  a  sec- 
tarian version  of  the  legend  of  Gautama,  did  no  such 
person  exist,  at  least  as  the  founder  of  a  religious 
body  ?  So  it  was  formerly  considered  ;  but  it  has  now 
been  discovered  that  the  Buddhist  scriptures  themselves 
bear  witness  to  the  actual  existence  of  Mahavira  in 
the  lifetime  of  Gautama,  who  once  had  an  encounter 
with  him  and  confuted  him.  It  appears  then  that  two 
similar  movements  were  going  on  close  together  at 
the  same  time.  They  were  independent  of  each  other ; 
the  two  rules  differ  in  important  particulars,  Jainism 
carries  to  a  much  greater  length  than  Buddhism  the 
"ahimsa,"  or  prohibition  of  the  destruction  of  life; 
the  Jainists  practise  austerities  which  Buddhism  dis- 
cards, and  in  the  philosophies  of  the  two  systems 
there  are  far-reaching  discrepancies.  On  the  other 
hand,  both  Buddhism  and  Jainism  borrow  from  Brah- 
manism most  of  their  practices  and  institutions  ;  both 
are  developments  of  the  way  of  salvation  struck  out 


CHAP.  XX  Buddliisni  36 


-» 


not  by  Brahmans  alone,  but  by  men  of  other  castes 
and  other  views,  when  faith  in  the  old  national  gods 
was  growing  dim. 

We  now  proceed  to  discuss  the  Buddhist  system, 
taking  it  as  it  appears  in  the  early  books,  which  tell 
us  at  least  what  was  believed  in  the  fourth  century 
B.C.  to  have  been  the  ideas  and  intentions  of  the 
founder.  The  following  is  the  formula  in  which  the 
convert  expressed  his  desire  to  be  admitted  to  the 
order :  "  I  take  shelter  in  the  Buddha,  I  take  shelter 
in  the  Dhamma  (doctrine),  I  take  shelter  in  the  Samgha 
(order)." 

I.  The  Buddha. — This  confession  of  faith  is  directed 
to  a  triad  of  which  the  Buddha  is  the  first  member. 
Now  the  title  Buddha  was  not  invented  by  Buddhism, 
but  belongs  to  earlier  Indian  thought,  which  held  that 
from  time  to  time,  in  a  specially  favoured  age,  an 
Enlightened  One  and  Enlightener,  an  omniscient  and 
perfect  teacher,  visited  the  world.  Of  these  there  had 
been  in  former  ages  twenty-four,  and  the  followers  of 
Gautama  held  him  to  be  the  twenty-fifth,  but  not  the 
last.  The  application  to  Gautama  of  this  title  removed 
him,  to  the  believer,  from  the  ranks  of  ordinary  men, 
and  was  the  signal  for  a  constantly  increasing  exalta- 
tion of  his  person.  In  adhering  to  the  Buddha,  there- 
fore, the  convert  is  not  bowing  to  a  mere  man,  but  to 
one  in  whom  a  new  type  of  deity  is  on  the  way  to 
be  realised.  He  is  a  man  ;  there  is  a  record  of  his 
human  life,  in  which  he  made  a  great  renunciation, 
abandoning,  out  of  compassion  for  men's  sufferings,  a 
position  of  lordly  ease  for  that  of  the  mendicant.  In 
this  way  he  is  a  saviour  not  too  exalted  for  the  pious 
heart  to  love  and  follow.  Having  found  out  in  his 
own  experience  the  way  of  peace,  and  opened  up  that 
way  for  others,  he  is  a  pattern  and  an  encouragement 
as  well  as  a  lawgiver  to  the  earnest  soul ;  and  the 
personal  relation  which  may  thus  be  enjoyed  with  the 
founder  is  one  great  secret  of  the  success  of  the  religion. 


364  History  of  Religion  part  iv 

On  the  other  hand,  he  is  more  than  a  man.      isThe  belief 
grew  up  very  early  that  he  was  not  born  in  the  <!:hordinary 
way,  but   that  his   birth   had  been   his  own    volbjuntary 
act,  and   that  his  great   renunciation   consisted   in-L  his 
choosing,  out  of  compassion  for  men,  to  enter  hum^  nn 
life  and  to  bear  the  burden  of  its  sufferings.     In  this  - 
way  a  religion  which  originally  had  no  gods  and  no 
worship    began    to    supply    itself   with    these.      Some 
scholars  hold   that  it  was  among  the  lay  community, 
among    men    not    thoroughly    initiated    into    Buddhist 
thought,    and    failing   to    find    in    the    new    faith    what 
their  former  religions  had  afforded,  that  the  deification 
of  the  Buddha  and  the  worship  of  him  began  ;  it  may 
certainly  be  doubted  whether   the  religion  could  have 
lived  long  or  spread  far  if  these  deficiencies  had  not 
been  early  supplied. 

2.  The  Doctrine. — The  life  of  the  founder  gives  us 
the  key  to  his  doctrine.  We  see  at  once  that  that 
doctrine  was  not  negative  but  positive  and  constructive. 
Neither  was  it  socially  of  a  revolutionary  character, 
nor  did  it  deny  any  part  of  the  existing  religion.  We 
never  read  that  Gautama's  teaching  was  assailed  by 
the  Brahmans  as  unsound ;  it  was  centuries  after  his 
death  that  antagonism  broke  out  between  the  order 
and  the  upholders  of  other  systems.  Nor  again  did 
the  teaching  put  forward  a  new  philosophy.  On  certain 
points  which  we  shall  notice  there  is  a  development 
of  thought  in  it ;  but  this  was  not  obtruded. 

In  fact  the  doctrine  is  not  a  speculation  at  all,  but 
a  way  of  salvation  which  is  preached  for  its  ov/n  sake, 
and  carefully  guarded  from  being  mixed  up  with 
speculative  or  religious  controversy.  The  Buddha  is 
one  who  has  found  out  a  new  way  to  be  saved,  and 
he  comes  forward  to  preach  what  he  has  discovered, 
and  that  alone.  Other  matters  he  leaves  as  they  are. 
"  All  his  discourses  savour  of  redemption  as  all  the 
sea  is  salt."  Other  men  may  draw  inferences  as  to 
the  relation  his  doctrine  bears  to  the  position  of  the 


CHAP.  XX  Buddhism  365 

Brahmans,  or  to  the  sacrifices,  or  to  existing  beliefs ; 
he  does  not  draw  these  inferences,  he  feels  no  need 
to  do  so. 

The  doctrine  professes  to  be  an  answer  to  a  definite 
problem — the  problem  of  pain.  It  is  the  most  character- 
istic thing  about  both  the  founder  and  the  doctrine, 
that  they  start  from  the  universal  existence  of  pain, 
to  seek  a  remedy  for  it ;  they  are  inspired  therefore 
from  the  first  by  a  dark  view  of  human  life,  and  by 
the  sentiment  of  compassion.  It  was  the  impression 
made  on  the  young  prince,  of  the  general  prevalence 
of  suffering,  that  drove  him  forth  from  the  palace  to 
be  a  sannyasin  or  devotee.  In  a  striking  sermon  he 
uses  the  figure  of  fire  to  indicate  how  universal  is  the 
rule  of  pain  in  all  parts  of  nature  and  of  human  life. 
"  All  is  burning ;  the  eye  is  burning,  and  all  it  looks 
on  and  all  it  remembers  of  what  it  has  seen " ;  so  it 
is  with  each  of  the  senses,  so  also  with  the  mind.  The 
fire  is  that  of  passion,  of  malice,  of  illusion,  of  birth, 
of  age,  of  death,  of  pain,  despondency,  and  despair. 
But  the  nature  of  the  complaint  from  which  man 
suffers,  and  also  the  remedy  for  it,  are  described  most 
clearly  in  the  "Four  Noble  Truths"  set  forth  in  the 
opening  sermon  at  Benares.  In  these  memorable  utter- 
ances the  teacher  expresses  himself  according  to  the 
rules  of  the  medical  art,  first  setting  forth  the  nature 
of  tlie  disease,  then  its  cause,  then  how  it  takes  end, 
and  lastly,  the  means  to  be  adopted  in  order  that  it  may 
do  so. 

1.  The  Noble  Truth  of  Suffering.  Birth  is  suffering, 
decay  is  suffering,  illness  is  suffering,  death  is  suffering. 
Presence  of  objects  we  hate  is  suffering,  separation  from 
objects  we  love  is  suffering,  not  to  obtain  what  we 
desire  is  suffering.  Briefly,  the  fivefold  clinging  to 
existence  is  suffering, 

2.  The  Noble  Truth  of  the  Cause  of  Suffering.  Thirst 
that  leads  to  rebirth,  accompanied  by  pleasure  and  lust, 
finding   its    delight    here    and     there.      This   thirst   is 


366  History  of  Religion  part  iv 

threefold,  namely,  thirst  for  pleasure,  thirst  for  existence, 
thirst  for  prosperity. 

3.  The  Noble  Truth  of  the  Cessation  of  Suffering. 
It  ceases  with  the  complete  cessation  of  this  thirst,  a 
cessation  which  consists  in  the  absence  of  every  passion, 
with  the  abandoning  of  this  thirst,  with  the  deliverance 
from  it,  with  the  destruction  of  desire. 

4.  The  Noble  Truth  of  the  Path  which  leads  to  the 
Cessation  of  Suffering.  The  holy  eightfold  Path  ;  that 
is  to  say.  Right  Belief,  Right  Aspiration,  Right  Speech, 
Right  Conduct,  Right  Means  of  Livelihood,  Right 
Endeavour,  Right  Memory,  Right  Meditation. 

In  these  statements  there  are  some  things  which  we 
can  readily  understand,  but  also  some  things  which 
are  not  so  easy.  It  is  a  thought  with  which  Christians 
are  familiar,  that  desire  is  the  parent  of  all  sorts  of 
pain  and  disappointment,  that  the  assertion  of  the 
self,  the  putting  forward  of  personal  wishes  and  claims, 
involves  suffering.  And  we  read  in  the  Gospels  that 
the  way  to  escape  from  such  suffering  is  to  cease  from 
desire,  no  longer  to  be  anxious  about  what  this  world 
can  give  us  or  take  from  us,  and  not  to  lay  up  treasures. 
Buddhist  doctrine  has  its  moral  basis  in  the  perception 
of  the  vanity  of  all  human  effort  and  desire,  and  in  the 
conviction  that  the  true  riches  for  man  cannot  consist 
in  any  of  those  goods  to  which  the  heart  naturally 
clings.  Where  that  perception  does  not  exist,  where 
the  first  of  the  Noble  Truths  is  not  accepted  as  beyond 
all  question,  Buddhism  can  have  no  hold.  So  far  the 
doctrine  is  easy  to  follow.  But  in  the  second  of  the 
Truths  we  find  that  the  cause  of  suffering  is  sought  in 
the  history  of  the  human  person  as  Indian  thought 
conceives  it.  Man  suffers  because  he  has  been  born 
again,  has  suffered  a  rebirth,  and  the  cause  of  his  re- 
birth is  the  thirst  which  has  been  felt  or  even  nourished 
in  a  previous  existence.  The  thought  that  suffering  is 
due  to  desire  is  not  presented  simply,  as  it  is  in  our 
Gospels,  but   in   connection  with  a   doctrine  of  man's 


CHAP.  XX  Buddhism  367 

life  and  of  the  connection  of  one  generation  with 
another,  which  is  quite  strange  to  us,  but  apart  from 
which  primitive  Buddhism  held  that  its  doctrine  of 
suffering  could  not  be  understood.  The  Buddha,  after 
discovering  the  doctrine,  is  at  first  in  doubt  whether 
or  not  he  will  preach  it ;  and  the  cause  of  his  doubt 
is  that  he  is  not  sure  if  men  will  be  able  to  understand 
the  law  of  causality  and  the  chain  of  existence,  on 
which  he  himself  meditated  a  whole  night  after  his 
enlightenment,  and  his  discovery  of  which  he  regards 
as  a  great  part  of  his  achievement.  This  chain  of 
causation  is  stated  in  a  long  series  of  asserted  pro- 
cesses, in  which  the  connection  between  one  genera- 
tion and  another,  and  the  transmission  from  life  to 
life  of  the  melancholy  heritage  of  desire  and  sorrow, 
is  obscurely  and  enigmatically  traced.  The  beginning 
of  all  is  ignorance  (of  the  four  truths) ;  from  ignorance 
proceed  the  "  samkharas  "  or  forms  of  production,  from 
these  in  turn  consciousness,  the  senses,  contact,  sensa- 
tion, thirst,  and  so  on  to  birth  and  the  miseries  of  life. 
Suffering  is  destroyed  by  tracing  this  sequence  over 
again  in  a  negative  way,  so  that,  the  first  member  of 
it  being  destroyed,  each  subsequent  member  is  destroyed 
in  turn. 

It  is  no  wonder  that  the  founder  doubted  whether 
this  doctrine  of  causation  would  be  generally  under- 
stood ;  for  it  is  in  fact  an  attempt  to  reconcile  two 
opposite  views  of  the  nature  of  the  human  person.  In 
the  first  place  we  find  in  early  Buddhism  the  thought 
that  there  is  no  such  thing  as  a  self  in  the  human 
being ;  a  man  is  made  up  of  various  bundles  of 
attributes  and  sensations  called  skandhas,  but  he  him- 
self is  none  of  these.  There  is  no  persistent  substratum 
of  a  self  under  these  activities  and  forms,  any  more 
than  there  is  a  carriage  in  addition  to  the  wheels, 
shafts,  nails,  etc.,  of  which  a  carriage  is  composed. 
The  Buddhist  is  called  on  to  give  up  the  belief  in  a 
permanent   ego ;   only   where  the  various   parts   come 


368  History  of  Religio7t  part  iv 

together   is   the   man    there.     This   is   the  well-known 
denial  of  the  soul  in  this  religion  ;  the  soul  is  nothing 
but  the  "  name  and  form "  of  a  chance  collocation  of 
elements.       It   is   hard   to   know   where   this   doctrine 
came  from  ;  Kern  says  it  is  derived  from  the  science 
of  dissection,  others  compare   it  with  the  doctrine  of 
Heraclitus,  taught  about  the  same  time  in  Greece,  that 
all   things    are    in    constant   flux,   nothing   permanent. 
The   last   words   of  the    Master   assert   that   decay   is 
universal;    and    the    doctrine    of    the    skandhas    is    a 
corollary  from  that  principle;    if  all   the   elements  of 
which  the  human   person    is   made  up  are  in  process 
of  decay,  then   the   self  cannot  be  a  substantial   and 
persistent   thing.      That    doctrine,   however,   does   not 
go   well   together   with   the   belief  in   the   universality 
and  incxorableness   of  suffering.     If  there  is  no  self, 
must   not   consciousness   come    to    an    end    when   the 
elements    fall     asunder    which     chance    has    brought 
together,  and  must  not  the  hour  of  death  be  also  the 
hour  of  complete  emancipation  ?     This,  however,  it  was 
impossible  to  hold  in  India  at  the  time  of  Gautama; 
the  belief  in  transmigration  was  too  firmly  fixed,  he 
never  thought  of  disputing  it.     That  belief  indeed  is 
what  chiefly  makes  the  suffering  of  the  world  so  lament- 
able.    To  Indian  eyes  the  pain  actually  in  the  world 
was  magnified  a  hundred-fold  by  the  dark  imagination 
of  its  connection  with  the  past   and   with  the  future. 
What  a  man  suffered  was  the  result  of  acts  done  in 
many  former   lives,   all   spent   in   the   vain    misery   of 
desire ;  and  the  sad  prospect  was  extended  before  him 
that  death  would  not  end  his  pains,  but  that  he  would 
be  born  again  and  again  to  suffer  ever  anew  so  long 
as  desire  continued.     But  if  this  is  the  case,  then  the 
soul  would  seem  to  be  a  durable  and  persistent  thing 
which   is  able   to   go   through    many  lives   and    much 
suffering  without   being  brought  to  an  end.     On   the 
theory  of  transmigration  the  soul  is  not  a  mere  shadow- 
name  of  an  aggregation  of  qualities,  but  the  one  durable 


CHAP.  XX  Buddhism  369 

thing  which  survives  when  all  that  is  accidental  and 
temporary  falls  away  from  it.  The  doctrine  of  the 
Skandhas  and  that  of  transmigration  are  thus  opposed, 
and  the  doctrine  of  the  nidanas  or  the  chain  of  causa- 
tion is  the  bridge  which  satisfied  Gautama's  own  mind, 
but  which  he  was  doubtful  about  presenting  to  others, 
to  bring  them  into  harmony.  He  aimed  at  showing 
by  his  catalogue  of  these  obscure  processes  how  the 
actions  done  in  a  life  set  up  a  tendency  to  a  correspond- 
ing existence  in  another  life  which  begins  after  the 
former  one  ends.  Though  there  is  no  soul  to  be  trans- 
mitted, the  moral  effects  of  former  lives  are  transmitted 
to  their  successors. 

The  essential  doctrine  of  the  Buddha,  however,  is 
determined  by  the  belief  in  transmigration.  His  cry 
of  triumph  at  the  time  of  his  enlightenment  is  to  the 
effect  that  the  long  series  of  suffering  existences  through 
which  he  has  passed  has  now  come  to  an  end,  and  that 
he  will  not  be  born  again.  And  what  he  preaches  with 
constant  iteration  is  the  misery  of  this  awful  succession 
of  births  to  renewal  of  suffering,  and  the  infinite  blessed- 
ness of  escaping  from  this  cycle.  The  disciple,  when 
converted,  is  to  be  able  to  say :  "  Hell  is  destroyed 
for  me,  and  rebirth  as  an  animal  or  a  ghost  or  in  any 
place  of  woe.  I  am  converted,  I  am  no  longer  liable 
to  be  reborn  in  a  state  of  suffering,  and  am  assured 
of  eternal  salvation." 

Now  it  rests  with  a  man's  own  acts  to  end  his 
sufferings.  The  chain  of  causation  which  ends  with 
suffering  begins  with  ignorance.  The  ignorance  which 
is  meant  is  that  of  the  four  noble  truths,  of  the  way  of 
salvation.  Let  a  man  cease  from  ignorance,  let  him 
accept  the  Noble  Truths  and  the  insight  they  convey 
into  the  cause  of  suffering,  then  by  ceasing  to  thirst, 
or  to  burn,  or  in  our  own  language  by  turning  his  mind 
away  from  all  desire,  believing  that  what  he  does  will 
be  effective  for  his  salvation,  he  sets  up  a  chain  of 
causation  in  an  opposite  direction,  and  having  destroyed 

2  .i 


.370  History  of  Religion  part  iv 

ignorance  he  may  rest  assured  that  he  has  destroyed 
suffcrinjT  too  and  is  in  the  right  way.  The  burden  he 
has  inherited  he  will  not  need  to  carry  any  farther,  but 
will,  when  he  dies,  lay  down  for  ever. 

When  we  look  at  the  fourth  Noble  Truth,  which  tells 
what  a  man  has  to  do  in  order  to  obtain  this  salvation, 
we  are  at  first  surprised.  After  the  deep  earnestness 
with  which  the  nature  of  the  disease  and  the  cause 
and  cure  of  the  disease  have  been  stated,  we  expect 
that  stronger  practical  measures  will  be  asked  for  than 
these  eight  forms  of  moderation.  Christianity  speaks  of 
^/cutting  off  the  right  hand,  plucking  out  the  right  eye, 
in  order  to  cut  off  desire :  and  the  Brahmanic  method 
of  union  with  the  Deity  was,  as  we  have  seen,  that  of 
the  most  extreme  self-mortification  united  with  con- 
templation. This  Brahmanic  method,  the  yoga  by 
which  the  devotee  sought  to  escape  from  all  the 
accidents  of  being  and  to  make  himself  one  with  the 
great  Self,  the  Buddha  had  tried  for  six  years ;  but 
he  had  given  it  up  for  a  year  when  the  hour  of  his 
enlightenment  struck,  and  he  explicitly  condemns  for 
others  the  path  he  had  found  unprofitable  for  himself. 
It  is  one  of  two  extremes,  both  to  be  avoided,  "  The 
one  extreme  is  a  life  devoted  to  pleasures  and  lusts  ; 
this  is  degrading,  sensual,  vulgar,  profitless ;  the  other 
is  a  life  given  to  mortifications  ;  this  is  painful,  ignoble, 
and  profitless.  By  avoiding  these  two  extremes  the 
Tathagata  has  gained  the  knowledge  of  the  Middle 
Path,  which  leads  to  insight,  wisdom,  calm,  to  Nirvana." 
The  way,  therefore,  to  escape  from  the  Karma,  the 
moral  retribution  which  works  inexorably  in  one  life 
the  result  stored  up  in  previous  lives,  is  that  of  a  care- 
ful and  unintermitted  self-discipline,  which  does  not  run 
to  extremes,  but  practices,  with  perfectly  clear  purpose 
and  self-possession,  the  needful  virtues  mentioned  in  the 
fourth  of  the  Noble  Truths.  What  are  these?  There 
is  to  be — 

1.  Right  belief,  without  superstition  or  delusion. 


CHAP.  XX  Buddhism  371 

2.  Right  aspiration,  after  such  things  as  the  thought- 

ful and  earnest  man  sets  store  by. 

3.  Right  speech,  speech  that  is  friendly  and  sincere. 

4.  Right  conduct,  conduct  that  is  peaceable,  honour- 

able, and  pure, 

5.  Right  means  of  livelihood,  i.e.  a  pursuit  which  does 

not  involve  the  taking  or  injuring  of  life. 

6.  Right  endeavour,  i.e.  self-restraint  and  watchfulness. 

7.  Right  memory,  i.e.  presence  of  mind,  not  forgetting 

at  any  time  what  one  ought  to  remember  ;  and 

8.  Right  meditation,  i.e.  earnest  occupation  with  the 

riddles  of  life. 
This  is  the  path;  there  are  four  stages  of  it — 

1.  The  stage  of  him  who  has  entered  the  path. 

2.  The  stage  of  him  who  has  yet  to  return  once  to  life. 

3.  The  stage  of  him  who  returns  not  again,  but  may 

be  born  again  as  a  superior  being ;  and 

4.  The  stage  of  the  worthy,  holy  one,  the  Arahat, 

who  is  free  from   desire  for  existence,  and  also 
from    pride   and   self-righteousness,  and   who   is 
saved  and  has  obtained   holiness,  even   in   this 
life. 
An  Arahat  is  not  equal  to  a  Buddha ;  the  former  is 
himself  saved,  but  the  perfect  Buddha   is   able   by  his 
perfect  knowledge  to  save  others.     Of  Buddhas,  how- 
ever, there  are  not  many.     One  becomes  an  Arahat  by 
a  life  of  strenuous  and  untiring  discipline.     Ten  fetters 
are  to  be  broken  by  which  a  man  is  kept  from  freedom  ; 
self-deception  is  one  of  them,  trust  in  sacrifice  another, 
and   the   list    embraces   both   sensual    and    intellectual 
weaknesses.     One  must  watch  and  be  sober  ;  every  act, 
however  trivial,  is  to  be  done  with  full  self-conscious- 
ness and  earnestness.     One  must  remember  that  he  is 
engaged  in  a  great  and  a  hard  work,  and  must  resolutely 
"  swim  upstream,"  estimating  at  its  proper  value  every 
affection   and   temptation   that  would    hold  him  back. 
The  body  is   to  be   contemned,  and  all  natural  ties ; 
emotion  is  to  be  uprooted  from  the  heart  so  that  the 


372  History  of  Religion  part  iv 

proper  state  of  entire  calm  and  undisturbedness  may- 
be maintained.  Then  one  is  an  Arahat,  a  true  Brahman, 
This  manner  of  life  requires  withdrawal  from  the  world; 
the  true  salvation  can  only  be  attained  by  him  who  has 
left  his  home  for  the  houseless  life.  But  Buddhism  has 
also  a  general  moral  code  for  those  who  have  not  taken 
this  step  ;  the  keeping  of  it  will  not  save  them  directly  ; 
from  the  life  they  are  now  leading  that  is  impossible, 
but  it  is  a  beginning ;  it  will  make  it  easier  for  them 
to  become  Arahats  and  attain  salvation  in  some  future 
existence.  For  all  it  is  good  to  be  free  from  desire; 
as  all  desire  contains  in  itself  a  germ  of  death,  there 
is  no  approach  to  salvation  except  in  this  direction. 

Buddhist  Morality. — Towards  fellow-men  Buddhist 
morality  is  based  on  the  notion  of  the  equality  of  all ; 
respect  is  to  be  paid  to  all  living  beings.  The  five  rules 
of  righteousness  which  are  binding  on  all  followers  of  the 
Buddha  are : 

1.  Not  to  kill  any  living  being. 

2.  Not  to  take  that  which  is  not  given. 

3.  To  refrain  from  adultery, 

4.  To  speak  no  untruth. 

5.  To  abstain  from  all  intoxicating  liquors. 

To  these  are  added  five  more  for  members  of  the 
order,  who  are  also  required  to  refrain  from  all  sexual 
intercourse,  viz.  : 

1.  Not  to  eat  after  mid-day. 

2.  Not  to  be  present  at  dancing,  singing,  music,  or 

plays. 

3.  Not  to  use  wreaths,  scents,  ointments,  or  personal 

ornaments. 

4.  Not  to  use  a  high  or  a  broad  bed. 

5.  To  possess  no  silver  or  gold. 

These  commandments,  like  those  of  the  Decalogue, 
are  negative  in  form  ;  but  in  the  Buddhist  scriptures  a 
positive  moral  ideal  is  inculcated  on  all,  which  is  grave 
and  attractive  in  its  character,  and  is  sustained  by  a 
strong  though  quiet  enthusiasm.    We  find  here  a  delicate 


CHAP.  XX  Buddhism  373 

conscientiousness  as  to  the  relations  to  be  cultivated 
with  one's  fellow-men;  the  widest  toleration  is  enjoined, 
a  toleration  extending  to  all  beings,  to  all  opinions. 
Hatred  is  to  be  repaid  by  love,  life  is  to  be  filled  with 
kindness  and  compassion.  The  Dhammapada  and  the 
Sutta-nipata  deserve  to  be  read  by  all  who  care  for  the 
unseen  riches  of  the  soul.  By  their  simple  earnestness, 
their  quaint  use  of  parable  and  metaphor,  and  their 
mingling  of  the  homeliest  things  with  the  highest  truths, 
these  books  take  rank  among  the  most  impressive  of 
the  religious  books  of  the  world.  We  give  only  a  few 
jewels  from  this  treasury 

From  the  Dhammapada. — Earnestness  is  the  path  of 
immortality  (Nirvana),  thoughtlessness  the  path  of  death. 
Those  who  are  in  earnest  do  not  die,  those  who  are 
thoughtless  are  as  if  dead  already. 

All  that  we  are  is  the  result  of  what  we  have  thought; 
it  is  founded  on  what  we  have  thought,  it  is  made  up  of 
what  we  have  thought.  If  a  man  speaks  or  acts  with  a 
pure  thought,  happiness  follows  him,  like  a  shadow  that 
never  leaves  him. 

By  oneself  evil  is  done,  by  oneself  one  suffers ;  by 
oneself  evil  is  left  undone,  by  oneself  one  is  purified. 
Purity  and  impurity  belong  to  oneself;  no  one  can 
purify  another. 

From  the  Sutta-nipata. — To  live  in  a  suitable  country, 
to  have  done  good  deeds  in  a  former  existence,  and  a 
thorough  study  of  oneself,  this  is  the  highest  blessing. 

As  a  mother  at  the  risk  of  her  life  watches  over 
her  own  child,  her  only  child,  so  also  let  every  one 
cultivate  a  boundless  friendly  mind  towards  all  beings. 

A  Bhikku  who  has  turned  away  from  desire  and 
attachment,  and  is  possessed  of  understanding  in  this 
world,  has  already  gone  to  the  immortal  place,  the 
unchangeable  state  of  Nirvana. 

Nirvana, — Our  account  of  the  doctrine  would  appear 
incomplete  if  we  did  not  attempt  to  answer  the  question, 
What  is   Nirvana?     It  is,  as   the  last  extract  shows, 


374  History  of  Religion  part  iv 

the  state  of  salvation  in  Buddhiism.  As  we  have  seen, 
it  is  the  condition  of  the  man  who  has  escaped  from 
the  series  of  rebirths,  and  will  never  be  born  again. 
It  is  attained  even  in  this  life  by  the  Arahat,  in 
whom  all  desire  and  restlessness  have  come  to  an 
end.  On  the  other  hand,  it  is  said  of  such  an  one 
that  he  enters  Nirvana  when  he  dies,  as  if  it  were  a 
state  not  of  this  life,  but  of  the  period  beyond.  Thus 
it  has  been  much  debated  whether  the  Buddhist  (or 
rather  Indian,  for  the  notion  is  not  peculiar  to  Buddhism) 
Nirvana  is  extinction,  annihilation,  of  which  the  quench- 
ing of  desire  in  this  life  is  the  prelude,  or  if  it  is  a 
state  of  negative  or  quiescent  blessedness,  on  which 
the  saint  can  enter  here  and  now,  but  which  is  only 
made  perfect  when  he  dies.  But  there  are  two 
Nirvanas  ; — that  of  entire  passionlessness  attained  in 
this  life,  and  the  consummate  Nirvana  entered  at  death. 
The  saint  does  not  need  to  wait  for  death  for  his 
redemption,  nor  must  he  hasten  his  death  in  order  to 
enjoy  it  fully  ;  Buddha,  by  example  and  by  precept, 
forbids  any  such  anticipation.  Death  seals  that  which 
was  already  won,  there  is  no  return  from  the  Nirvana 
of  death  to  any  further  life.  This,  however,  does  not 
amount  to  an  assertion  that  the  dead  Arahat  has  no 
life  or  knowledge  in  the  beyond ;  he  is  freed  from 
desire,  but  whether  his  consciousness  is  altogether 
extinguished.  Buddhism  does  not  decide,  and  regards 
as  a  vain  speculation. 

No  Gods. — We  shall  speak  afterwards  of  this  view 
of  redemption,  which  is  the  key  to  the  nature  of  the 
Buddhist  religion.  We  remark  here  that  it  is  a 
redemption  man  achieves  by  his  own  efforts,  without 
any  outward  prop  or  aid.  In  this  system  there  is  no 
occasion  for  any  priests  or  sacrifices,  for  any  prayers, 
or  for  any  gods.  There  is  no  ritual,  because  there 
is  no  object  of  worship,  there  is  no  sin  in  the  sense 
of  offending  a  higher  being.  The  gods  are  denied 
not  because  of  any  speculative  doubt  of  their  existence, 


CHAP.  XX  Buddhism  375 

but  because  in  that  inner  world  of  moral  effort  which 
man  has  come  to  feel  so  supremely  real  and  important, 
they  have  no  part  to  play.  As  all  the  gods  faded 
away  in  Indian  speculation  before  Brahma,  so  Brahma's 
own  turn  has  come  to  fade  away.  The  Buddhist  speaks 
of  the  gods  as  if  they  existed,  and  he  makes  no  attack 
on  the  sacrifices  ;  but  no  living  god  fills  his  heart.  The 
Buddha  is  greater  than  all  the  gods  ;  his  teaching  is  for 
the  benefit  of  gods  as  well  as  men.  But  the  Buddha  is 
not  an  object  of  worship.  If  the  Buddhist  can  be  said 
to  worship  any  higher  power,  it  is  the  moral  order 
which  never  fails  to  reward  men  according  to  the 
deeds  done  in  this  or  former  existences.  That  is  for 
him  a  real  and  tremendous,  though  impersonal  power, 
and  in  contemplating  it  he  may  be  said  to  worship 
after  a  fashion.  But  he  has  no  aid  to  look  for  from 
any  power  in  heaven  or  earth  in  working  out  his 
salvation.  Buddhism  is  the  most  autosoteric  of  all 
religions ;  it  declares  more  uncompromisingly  than 
any  other,  that  man  must  save  himself  by  his  own 
efforts,  and  that  no  one  can  possibly  stand  in  his 
place  or  relieve  him  of  any  part  of  his  great  task. 
All  that  any  one,  even  the  Buddha,  can  do  for  another, 
is  to  enlighten  him,  to  open  his  eyes  to  the  true 
knowledge,  and  show  him  the  narrow  path  on  which 
he  must  thenceforth  walk. 

3.  The  Order. — There  v/ere  monks  before  Buddhism. 
That  religion  made  its  appearance  when  Indian  thought 
was  at  the  stage  of  growth  at  which  monastic  com- 
munities may  be  expected  to  arise.  When  religion  has 
ceased  to  be  regarded  as  the  affair  of  the  nation  or  the 
tribe,  and  is  cherished  as  the  affair  of  the  individual, 
when  the  mind  turns  from  the  sacrifices  and  ritual  of 
public  religion  to  cultivate  relations  with  a  power  known 
chiefly  in  the  heart  and  soul,  and  when  religious  duty 
has  thus  come  to  be  recognised  as  a  boundless  and  all- 
embracing  thing,  not  a  service  the  hands  and  feet  can 
discharge,  but  the  effort,  never  ending,  still  beginning, 


376  History  of  Religio7i  part  iv 

to  make  the  whole  personality  with  all  its  acts  and 
aims  conform  to  the  ideal,  then  it  is  that  men  who  are 
living  for  religion  seek  for  such  aid  as  they  can  give 
each  other,  and  find  it  in  an  order  and  a  discipline.  The 
rules  of  the  Buddhist  Samgha  or  order  are  extant,  and 
so  are  the  rules  of  the  contemporary  Jainist  fraternity. 
The  Samgha  resembled  the  Franciscan  more  than  the 
other  great  Christian  orders.  The  Bhikku  on  joining 
it  abandoned  his  family  and  property,  assumed  the 
yellow  robe  and  other  scanty  properties  of  the  char- 
acter, and  lived  thenceforth  by  begging,  and  in  strict 
subjection  to  the  rules,  in  which  every  detail  of  his 
food,  his  clothing,  his  residence,  and  his  daily  walk 
and  conversation,  were  laid  down.  The  two  great 
objects  of  the  society  were  mutual  help  in  the  religious 
life  and  the  preaching  of  the  doctrine.  Under  the  first 
head  come  the  frequent  meetings  of  monks  and  the 
confessions  they  make  to  each  other  according  to  a 
fixed  form.  There  is  no  vow  of  obedience  ;  the  monk 
obeys  the  law,  not  the  human  authority.  In  preaching 
they  are  to  go  one  by  one,  and  they  are  to  preach  to 
all.  To  all  who  would  hear  it  was  the  gate  open  to 
this  salvation.  Here  the  Buddhist  neglect  of  caste 
comes  in.  Buddhism  makes  no  general  or  formal 
declaration  of  the  equality  of  all  men,  nor  is  there 
any  attack  on  the  Brahman  caste  or  any  exaltation 
of  the  lower  castes.  The  order  drew  its  recruits  at 
first  from  the  ranks  of  the  Brahmans.  But  the  impel- 
ling motive  of  the  new  religion  was  compassion,  and 
genuine  compassion  is  not  to  be  restrained  in  artificial 
limits.  The  salvation  preached  was  fitted  for  all  men. 
The  disease  to  be  cured  was  one  from  which  all 
suffer,  and  the  cure  was  one  which  all  could  at  least 
begin  to  lay  hold  of  Thus  Buddhism  was  fitted  to 
break  through  the  barriers  of  caste,  and  to  gather  into 
one  religious  community  men  of  all  castes  alike.  In 
the  community,  it  was  held,  these  distinctions  dis- 
appeared.    Not  birth  but  conduct  there  made  the  true 


CHAP.  XX  Buddhism  377 

Brahman.  The  universalist  tendency  of  the  religion 
also  fitted  it  to  spread  to  other  lands.  It  was  not 
limited  by  anything  in  its  teaching  to  the  soil  of  India, 
nor  to  the  territory  of  any  particular  set  of  gods.  So 
wide  indeed  is  its  toleration,  that  a  man  may  embrace 
it  without  giving  up  the  faith  in  which  he  lived  before. 
One  can  add  it  without  incongruity  to  one's  former 
beliefs  and  practices.  The  believer  in  Shang-ti  can  be 
a  Buddhist  as  well  as  the  believer  in  Brahma.^  The 
absence  of  any  hierarchy  or  centralised  organisation 
enabled  it  to  spread  freely,  and  the  very  meagreness 
of  its  doctrine,  and  its  freedom  from  ritual,  were  also 
in  its  favour. 

Buddhism  made  Popular. — Buddhism  proved  able  to 
spread  over  many  lands  because  it  was  so  simple,  and 
in  its  essence  so  moral  and  so  broadly  human.  But, 
like  other  faiths  which  have  spread  to  many  lands,  it 
assumed  very  different  forms  in  different  countries, 
and  the  later  form  is  often  very  different  from  the 
early  simplicity.  Even  at  the  outset  it  was  not  free 
from  a  strong  infusion  of  magic ;  the  Arahat,  like  the 
Brahmanic  ascetic  before  him,  was  believed  to  obtain 
influence  over  the  gods  by  his  virtues,  and  thus  a 
claim  to  supernatural  power  is  brought  in,  which  agrees 
but  ill  with  the  ethical  doctrine.  The  religion,  which 
at  first  ignored  the  gods  and  bade  each  man  trust  to 
his  own  efforts  for  his  highest  good,  became,  ere  long, 
what  a  popular  religion  at  the  stage  of  progress  pre- 
vailing at  that  time  necessarily  was,  namely,  a  worship 
of  superior  beings  and  a  method  of  obtaining  benefits 
from  them.  The  national  gods  were  discarded,  but 
the  deification  of  the  founder  early  furnished  a  being 
who  could  be  worshipped.  Legend  grew  luxuriantly 
round  his  birth  and  early  career ;  and  he  obtained  the 
rank  of  the  greatest  of  all  the  gods.  Former  Buddhas 
who  had  lived  in  former  ages  still  lived  as  gods  ;  and 

^  Millions  of  Buddhists  in  China  and  Japan  are  also  adherents  of  the 
other  religions  of  these  countries. 


37^       '  History  of  Religion  part  iv 

the  divine  family,  being  once  founded,  admitted  of 
various  additions ;  even  a  popular  deity,  such  as  Indra, 
could  be  joined  to  the  growing  circle.  The  chief 
scenes  of  the  life  of  the  founder  became  holy  places 
and  objects  of  pilgrimage,  where  relics  were  exposed 
for  adoration.  The  growth  of  legend  and  of  magic 
proceeded  more  rapidly,  and  went  to  greater  lengths, 
in  Northern  than  in  Southern  Buddhism  ;  but  in  the 
land  of  its  birth,  too,  Buddhism  proved  unable  to 
serve  as  a  working  religion  without  additions  and 
modifications  entirely  foreign  to  its  true  character. 
The  profession  of  Buddhism  was  combined  even  with 
the  savage  worship  of  the  non-Aryan  tribes ;  Siva  was 
identified  with  Buddha  and  then  worshipped  instead 
of  him,  as  also  was  Vishnu,  and  the  perversion  and 
degradation  of  the  religion  prepared  for  its  expulsion 
from  the  country  of  its  birth.  That  expulsion  was 
probably  brought  about  more  immediately  by  the 
advance  of  Mohammedanism  in  India,  and  took  place 
in  the  period  of  the  early  Middle  Ages.  We  cannot 
speak  here  of  the  strange  guise  Buddhism  has  assumed 
in  the  north  of  India,  notably  in  Tibet.  The  Lamaism 
of  that  country,  with  its  perpetual  living  incarnation 
of  the  divine  Buddha  in  a  succession  of  human  repre- 
sentatives, its  hierarchical  church  strongly  resembling 
in  many  of  its  features  the  Church  of  Rome,  and  the 
prayer-flags  and  wheels  for  the  mechanical  discharge 
of  religious  acts,  have  long  been  the  wonder  of  the 
world. 

Conclusion. — It  is  not  from  what  Buddhism  is  now  in 
any  of  the  countries  where  it  flourishes,  and  where  it  has 
votaries  who  profess  other  religions  also,  that  we  can 
judge  of  what  it  really  is,  or  estimate  its  value  as  a 
product  of  the  human  mind.  It  is  to  early  Buddhism 
that  we  must  look  for  this.  What  are  we  to  judge  of  this 
religion  without  gods,  and  based  on  the  assertion  that 
all  life  is  suffering,  and  that  the  chief  good  is  altogether 
to  escape  from  life  ?     It  is  not  true  to  characterise  it  as 


CHAP.  XX  Buddhism  379 

a  religion  in  which  there  is  no  joy,  and  which  deliberately 
refuses  to  have  anything  to  do  with  joy.  The  Arahat, 
in  whom  desire  is  vanquished,  and  who  has  no  further 
birth  to  anticipate,  is  filled  with  a  deep  joy  and  triumph 
as  of  a  victor  who  has  conquered  every  foe  ;  and  those 
who  are  less  advanced  in  the  path  yet  have  their  share 
in  this  enthusiasm,  and  are  inspired  by  it  to  continue 
the  struggle.  Still  Buddhism  is  a  sad  religion.  It 
arrives  in  India  when  the  Deity  there  believed  in  has 
deserted  the  world,  and  tells  man  he  is  alone  in  it. 
There  is  no  one  to  help  him,  no  one  to  assure  him 
that  the  good  cause  in  a  wider  sense — a  cause  extend- 
ing beyond  his  own  personal  life  —  is  destined  to 
succeed  ;  there  is  no  upholder  of  any  moral  order 
beyond  that  which  works  itself  out  in  each  individual 
experience.  The  result  is  that  the  believer  does  not 
trouble  himself  about  the  world,  but  only  about  his  own 
personal  salvation.  This  religion  is  not  a  social  force, 
it  aims  not  at  a  Kingdom  of  God  to  be  built  up  by  the 
united  efforts  of  multitudes  of  the  faithful,  but  only  at 
saving  individual  souls,  which  in  the  act  of  being  saved 
are  removed  beyond  all  activity  and  all  contact  with 
the  world.  Buddhism,  therefore,  is  not  a  power  which 
makes  actively  for  civilisation.  It  is  a  powerful  agent 
for  the  taming  of  passion  and  the  prevention  of  vagrant 
and  lawless  desires,  it  tends,  therefore,  towards  peace. 
But  it  offers  no  stimulus  to  the  realisation  of  the  riches 
which  are  given  to  man  in  his  own  nature :  it  checks 
rather  than  fosters  enterprise,  it  favours  a  dull  con- 
formity to  rule  rather  than  the  free  cultivation  of 
various  gifts.  Its  ideal  is  to  empty  life  of  everything 
active  and  positive,  rather  than  to  concentrate  energy 
on  a  strong  purpose.  It  does  not  train  the  affections 
to  virtuous  and  harmonious  action,  but  denies  to  them 
all  action  and  consigns  them  to  extinction.  This  con- 
demnation it  has  incurred  by  parting  with  that  highest 
stimulus  to  human  virtue  and  endeavour,  which  lies  in 
the  belief  in  a  living  God.     By  so  doing  it  ceased  to 


380  History  of  Religion  part  iv 

fulfil  the  office  of  a  religion  for  men,  and  though,  for 
historical  purposes,  we  may  class  it  among  the  religions 
of  the  world,  a  system  which  leaves  its  adherents  free 
not  to  worship  at  all,  or  to  find  satisfaction  for  their 
spiritual  instincts  in  the  worship  of  beings  whom  it 
regards  with  indifference,  comes  short  of  the  notion  of 
religion,  and  is  not  properly  entitled  to  that  name. 

Books  Recommended 

Monier  Williams,  Buddhism,  in  its  connection  with  Brahmanistn  and 
Hinduism,  and  in  its  contrast  with  Christianity,  1889. 

Rhys  Davids,  Buddhism  (S.P.C.K.). 

Oldenberg's,  Buddha,  his  Life,  his  Doctrine  and  his  Order,  1882  (out  of 
print).     (Third  German  Edition,  1897.) 

Spence  Hardy,  Manual  of  Buddhism,  i860. 

E.  Hardy,  Der  Buddhismus. 


CHAPTER   XXI 

PERSIA 

The  Aryans  who  entered  India  to  become  its  dominant 
race  came  from  Central  Asia,  and  left  behind  them 
there  other  tribes  of  Aryan  culture.  These  tribes 
remained  in  what  is  called  Iran,  in  the  lands,  that  is  to 
say,  between  the  Indus,  the  Caspian  Sea,  the  Black  Sea, 
and  the  Persian  Gulf.  It  is  from  this  region,  a  part  of 
which  bore  in  ancient  times  the  name  of  Ariana,  that 
the  word  "  Aryan  "  is  derived.  The  languages  of  this 
territory  are  akin  to  Sanscrit ;  and  there  is  ample 
evidence  that  before  the  Indian  invasion  the  progenitors 
of  the  Indians  and  those  of  the  Iranians  dwelt  together 
there,  and  enjoyed  a  common  civilisation.  If  the 
civilisation  was  the  same  the  religion  also  was  the  same. 
How  the  Indo-Iranian  religion  was  developed  in  India, 
we  have  seen.  At  first  a  worship  of  active  and  militant 
deities,  it  became  by  degrees  a  religion  of  a  passive 
type,  in  which  a  suffering,  acquiescent,  and  brooding 
humanity  presented  to  heaven  its  needs  and  problems, 
and  received  a  corresponding  answer.  The  Aryans 
who  remained  in  Iran  retained  their  active  and  practical 
disposition.  While  by  no  means  wanting  in  sensitive- 
ness and  flexibility  of  mind,  they  were  less  given  to 
speculation  and  more  to  a  robust  morality  than  their 
Indian  kinsmen.  It  has  to  be  noted  that  while  the 
religion  of  India  has  not  influenced  Europe  in  any 
manifest  degree  until  the  present  century,  that  of  Persia 

381 


382  History  of  Religion  part  iv 

has  contributed  in  a  marked  way  to  form  the  world  of 
thought  in  which  we  dwell. 

Sources.  —  The  views  generally  current  about  the 
ancient  religion  of  Persia  are  derived  from  late  Greek 
writers,  whose  accounts  will  be  noticed  at  the  end  of 
this  chapter.  A  truer  knowledge  is  now  possible,  since 
the  sacred  books  of  the  religion  are  now  open  to  the 
world.  They  were  only  obtained  from  the  Parsis,  who 
keep  up  their  ancient  religion  on  the  soil  of  India, 
during  last  century,  and  the  study  of  them  has  been 
very  laborious  and  difficult,  and  has  given  rise  to  great 
controversies  which  are  not  yet  settled.  These  ancient 
books  are  furnished  with  Eastern  translations  and  com- 
mentaries. Is  the  Western  scholar  to  place  himself 
under  the  guidance  of  these,  which  no  doubt  are  part 
of  the  historical  tradition  of  the  religion,  or  may  he 
claim  that  he  is  himself  in  as  good  a  position  as  the 
Oriental  commentator  for  understanding  the  orieinal 
meaning  of  the  texts ;  and  will  he  best  interpret  them 
by  comparing  them  with  the  Vedas  ?  What  is  their 
age ;  in  which  of  the  lands  of  Iran  were  they  written  ; 
was  any  part  of  them  written  by  Zoroaster,  or  is 
Zoroaster  to  be  regarded  as  an  historical  personage 
at  all  ?  On  all  these  questions  and  on  many  others, 
scholars  are  not  yet  agreed  ;  and  while  so  much  is 
uncertain  about  the  books,  there  must  also  be  great 
uncertainty  about  the  history  and  the  very  nature  of 
the  religion.  In  what  follows  we  are  guided  mainly 
by  the  scholars  who  have  taken  charge  of  the  volumes 
connected  with  Persia  in  the  Sacred  Books  of  the 
East}  In  the  last  of  these  volumes  (xxxi.)  a  new 
clue  is  given  to  the  subject,  of  which  we  shall  gladly 
avail  ourselves. 

The  sacred  books  of  Persia  are  known  by  the  name 

of  "  Zend-Avesta,"  which  is  an  incorrect  expression  ;  we 

ought   to   say  Avesta  and  Zend.      "Avesta,"  like  the 

kindred  word  "  Veda,"  signifies  knowledge,  and  the  word 

^  Zend-Avesta,  S.  B.  E.,  vols.  iv.  xxiii.  xxxi. 


CHAP.   XXI 


Persia  383 


"  Zend "  denotes  here  not  the  language  of  that  name, 
but  the  "  commentary  "  afterwards  added  to  the  original 
knowledge  or  text.  The  commentary  is  not  wi'itten  in 
the  Zend  language,  but  in  Pahlavi  or  Persian,  The 
Avesta,  which  is  written  in  the  older  Zend,  the  sacred 
language  of  Persia,  is,  like  other  Bibles,  a  collection  of 
books  written  in  different  ages,  and  even,  it  may  be,  in 
different  lands.  The  books  were  brought  together  into 
one  only  at  some  period  after  the  Christian  era.  The 
later  legends  as  to  the  supernatural  communication  to 
Zoroaster  of  the  earlier  books  need  not  detain  us ; 
we  must  notice,  however,  that  the  preserved  books  of 
Persian  religion  are  held  to  be  no  more  than  the  scanty 
ruins  of  an  extensive  literature.  The  Avesta  consisted 
originally  of  21  Nosks  or  books,  and  most  of  these  were 
destroyed  by  Alexander  when  he  invaded  the  East; 
only  one  Nosk  was  preserved  entire.  As  we  have  it, 
the  Avesta  is  a  liturgical  work,  it  contains  some  legends 
and  some  ancient  hymns,  as  well  as  a  good  deal  of  law, 
but  its  prevailing  character  is  that  of  a  service-book, 
and  it  is  to  this  that  its  partial  preservation  both  at  the 
invasion  of  Alexander,  and  at  that  of  the  Mohammedans 
in  a  later  century,  is  probably  due.  It  consists  of  three 
parts.  The  oldest  is  the  Yasna,  a  collection  of  liturgies, 
which  admit  and  indeed  invite  comparison  with  those 
of  early  Christianity :  along  with  these  are  found  the 
Gathas  or  hymns,  the  only  part  of  the  Avesta  composed 
in  verse,  and  written  in  an  older  dialect.  The  Visperad 
is  a  collection  of  litanies  for  the  sacrifice  ;  and  the 
Vendidad  is  a  code  of  early  law,  but  contains  also 
various  religious  legends.  Besides  these  works,  which 
constitute  the  Avesta  proper,  there  is  the  Khorda  (or 
small)  Avesta  containing  devotions  for  various  times 
of  the  day,  for  the  days  of  the  month,  and  for  the 
religious  year  ;  these  are  for  the  use  not  of  the  priests 
alone  but  of  all  the  faithful,  and  many  of  them  are  still 
so  used. 
The  Contents  of  the  Zend  Avesta  are  Composite. — 


■» 


84  History  of  Religion  part  iv 


In  these  works  the  student  soon  observes  that  he  has 
before  him  not  one  religious  system  only  but  several. 
In  one  place  we  find  a  worship  of  one  god,  as  if 
there  were  no  others  to  be  considered  ;  some  of  the 
litanies  on  the  other  hand  contain  lengthy  and  elaborate 
lists  of  objects  of  worship.  In  some  parts  the  religion 
is  personal  and  immediate;  in  others  it  is  priestly. 
Farsism  is  often  called  fire-worship,  and  the  elements 
of  earth  and  water  also  obtain  extreme  sanctity  in 
it,  but  of  this  also  there  is  in  the  oldest  books  little 
trace.  The  variety  in  the  literature  no  doubt  reflects 
a  variety  in  the  religion  of  Iran.  Iran  in  fact  had 
not  one  religion  but  several,  and  thus  the  problem  is 
to  trace  how  these  successively  entered  into  contact 
with  Mazdeism  or  Zoroastrianism,  which  is  the  religion 
most  native  to  Iran,  and  were  embodied  in  it.  The 
different  religions  belonged  to  a  certain  extent  to 
different  provinces.  We  know  that  Persia,  the  conqueror 
of  Media,  was  conquered  in  turn  by  the  Median  religion  ; 
we  also  know  that  the  religion  of  the  Persian  kings 
as  read  in  their  inscriptions  ^  does  not  correspond  to 
any  of  the  religious  positions  held  in  the  Avesta. 
The  Magi,  from  whom  also  the  religion  as  a  whole 
derives  one  of  its  names,  belonged  to  Media  and  passed 
from  there  to  greater  power  in  Iran  as  a  whole.  From 
the  Scythians  on  the  north  and  from  Babylonia  on 
the  south,  ideas  and  practices  were  imported ;  and 
in  these  and  other  ways,  forms  of  religion  arose  as 
different  from  the  faith  of  Zoroaster  as  later  forms  of 
Christianity  from  the  simplicity  of  Christ,  yet  looking 
to  him  as  their  founder  and  the  giver  of  their  law. 

Zoroaster. — We  begin  with  the  teaching  of  Zoroaster. 
Dr.  E.  Meyer  in  his  Geschichte  des  Alter thunis,  vol.  i., 
and  Mr.  Darmesteter  in  his  admirable  introduction  to 
the  Avesta  (5.  B.  E.  vol.  iv.)  both  treat  Zoroaster  as 
a  mythical  personage,  a  figure-head  of  the  official 
class  of  the  religion,  who  give  currency  to  their  edicts 
*  Records  oj  t/ie  Past,  i.  107. 


CHAP.  XXI  Persia  385 

under  his  name.  Weighty  authorities  may,  however, 
be  quoted  for  the  historical  reality  of  Zoroaster,  and 
what  appears  to  us  most  important  of  all,  the  editor 
of  the  Gathas,  in  the  S.  B.  E.  vol.  xxxi,,  departing 
from  his  collaborateur,  Mr.  Darmesteter,  has  treated 
these  hymns,  which  give  an  account  of  the  founder's 
acts  and  experiences  when  first  proclaiming  the  true 
doctrine,  in  such  a  way  as  to  produce  on  the  mind 
of  the  reader  the  strongest  impression  of  the  historical 
reality  of  the  prophet  and  of  his  mission.  They  intro- 
duce us  to  a  religious  movement  actually  in  progress 
in  the  poet's  time,  a  movement  in  which  a  pure  and 
lofty  faith  is  struggling  to  establish  itself  against  pre- 
vailing superstitions.  The  doctrine  placed  in  the  mouth 
of  the  reformer  is  that  which  is  most  central  in  Persian 
religion  ;  and  only  by  such  deep  earnestness  and 
devotion  as  is  here  ascribed  to  him,  could  it  have 
attained  that  position.  We  start,  then,  with  Zoroaster 
and  his  work  ;  and  first  of  all  we  ask  what  was  his 
date,  where  did  he  live,  and  what  kind  of  religion  did 
he  find  existing  in  his  country  ? 

The  date  of  Zoroaster  or  Zarathustra — the  former 
is  the  Greek,  the  latter  the  old  Iranian  form  of  the 
name,  contracted  in  Persian  to  Zardusht  —  can  only 
be  fixed  very  approximately.  He  stands  at  the  very 
beginning  of  the  Avesta  literature,  and  the  develop- 
ments in  religion  to  which  that  literature  testifies  must 
have  occupied  a  long  period.  On  the  other  hand  no 
one  proposes  to  place  Zarathustra  before  the  departure 
of  the  Indian  Aryans  from  the  Indo-Iranian  stock. 
From  such  vague  data  he  may  be  assigned  perhaps 
to  somewhere  about  1400  B.C.  As  to  his  province, 
there  is  considerable  agreement  among  scholars  that 
his  doctrine  spread  from  the  east  of  Iran  westwards ; 
and  though  tradition  gives  him  a  birthplace  in  Media, 
his  mission  lay  nearer  to  India,  in  Bactria. 

Primitive  Religrion  of  Iran. — He  did  not  preach  to 
men  unacquainted  with  religion.     Many  of  the  religious 

2  \\ 


■f 


86  History  of  Religion  part  iv 


ideas  and  figures  of  the  Vedas  occur  also  in  Persia, 
and  by  the  study  of  these  it  is  possible  to  form  certain 
inferences  as  to  the  mental  history  of  Persia  before 
Zarathustra.  Mithra  the  sun-god  belongs  to  Persia 
as  well  as  India.  The  heaven-god  known  in  India 
as  Varuna  grew  into  the  principal  deity  of  Persia. 
A  fire-god,  wind-  and  rain-gods,  and  the  serpent  hostile 
to  man,  on  whom  these  made  war,  are  common  to 
both  countries.  The  institution  of  sacrifice,  in  which 
the  deities  are  served  with  offerings  and  with  hymns, 
is  markedly  alike  in  both  countries.  In  both  alike 
sacrifice  is  at  first  the  affair  not  of  a  priesthood  but 
of  laymen,  especially  of  princes,  and  is  not  confined 
to  temples  but  is  performed  in  the  open  air,  on  a 
spot  judged  to  be  suitable.  The  most  imposing  sacrifice 
is  that  of  the  horse,  and  an  offering  of  constant 
occurrence  is  that  of  the  intoxicating  liquor,  in  India 
Soma,  in  Persia  by  a  recognised  transliteration  Homa, 
which  is  itself  viewed  as  a  cosmic  principle  of  life, 
and  addressed  as  a  deity.  And  in  both  countries 
alike  the  view  of  sacrifice  prevails  in  early  times,  that 
the  gods  come  to  it  to  take  their  part  in  a  banquet 
which  their  worshippers  share  with  them,  and  that 
they  are  strengthened  and  encouraged  by  it. 

These  similarities,  and  others  which  might  be 
mentioned,  show  that  the  religion  of  India  and  that 
of  Persia  started  from  a  common  stock  of  ideas  and 
usages.  A  further  circumstance  of  great  importance 
shows  not  only  the  original  identity  of  the  two  systems, 
but  also  perhaps  how  they  came  to  diverge  from 
each  other.  Two  generic  titles  for  deities  occur  in 
India.  The  first  of  these  —  deva,  is  said  to  signify 
the  bright  or  shining  one,  the  second — asura,  the  living 
one.  Now  these  titles  are  also  found  in  Persia  ;  but 
the  use  of  the  terms  is  different  in  the  two  countries. 
In  India  both  are  at  first  titles  for  deity,  but  by 
degrees,  while  "  deva "  continues  to  denote  the  gods 
who  are  worshipped,  "asura"  assumes  a  less  favourable 


CHAP.  XXI  Persia  387 

meaning,  until  at  length  it  comes  to  stand  for  a  second 
order  of  beings,  inferior  to  the  devas,  and  including 
such  powers  as  are  malignant  and  hostile.  In  Persia 
the  fortunes  of  the  two  words  are  reversed.  Ahura 
becomes  the  god  par  excellence,  the  supreme  god ; 
while  "deva,"  the  title  which  in  India  remained  in 
honour,  is  in  the  Avesta  that  of  evil  gods  who  are 
not  to  be  worshipped.  In  this  some  scholars  consider 
that  we  may  hear  the  watchwords  of  the  conflict  which 
led  to  the  separation  of  the  two  religions  ;  there  was 
a  schism  between  the  followers  of  the  Ahuras  and 
those  of  the  Devas,  which  led  to  the  entire  separation 
of  the  two  parties.  This  is  the  latest  form  of  the 
old  view  which  makes  Zoroastrianism  the  outcome  of 
a  religious  conflict,  of  a  reaction  against  the  gods 
afterwards  worshipped  in  India.  There  is  no  direct 
evidence  of  such  a  conflict,  and  the  difference  we  have 
described  may  be  due  to  the  natural  development  of 
the  Indo-Iranian  religion  in  different  sets  of  circum- 
stances and  among  different  peoples.  Zarathustra  in 
the  Gathas  finds  the  antithesis  fully  formed  between 
the  good  and  the  evil  deities  ;  he  appeals  to  his 
countrymen  on  that  matter  as  one  which  he  does 
not  need  to  teach  them,  but  with  which  they  have 
long  been  familiar.  In  speaking  of  his  date  this  has 
to  be  remembered. 

We  proceed  now  to  describe  from  the  Gathas  the 
work  and  teaching  of  Zarathustra.  The  Gathas  are 
poems  written  in  metres  which  occur  also  in  the  Vedas, 
and  intended,  like  the  Indian  hymns,  to  be  used  in 
worship.  The  account  which  they  furnish  of  the 
mission  and  the  teaching  of  the  sage  are  thus  clothed 
in  a  poetical  dress,  and  do  not  narrate  bare  facts  as 
they  occurred,  but  the  facts  as  interpreted  and  treated 
for  religious  use.  They  are  in  the  mouth  of  Zarathustra 
himself;  he  writes  them  for  use  at  sacrifice,  and  re- 
membering how  they  are  to  be  rendered,  he  some- 
times puts  in  the  mouth  of  the  celebrants  the  words. 


388  History  of  Religion  part  iv 

"  Zarathustra  and  we."  These  words  do  tiot  prove 
that  the  hymns  are  not  by  him.  As  explained  by 
Dr.  Mills,  the  hymns  are  seen  to  be  very  fully  charged 
with  meaning  and  with  sentiment.  Uncouth  and 
inartistic  in  expression,  and  demanding  an  immense 
amount  of  patience  and  ingenuity  to  trace  their  con- 
nection of  thought,  they  surprise  the  reader  when  once 
he  seizes  their  meaning,  by  the  depth  and  spirituality 
of  their  contents,  and  force  him  to  acknowledge  that 
they  are  a  worthy  document  of  the  birth  of  a  great 
religion. 

The  Call  of  Zarathustra. — The  hymns  give  a  vivid 
picture  of  that  early  world  in  which  the  prophet  lived. 
It  was  a  world  distracted  with  conflict.  On  one  side 
there  is  an  agricultural  community  bent  on  industry, 
and,  like  the  Hindus,  even  at  this  day,  valuing  as  most 
sacred  the  cattle  which  form  their  chief  substance. 
On  the  other  hand,  there  are  men  who  dwell  on  the 
outskirts  between  the  tilled  land  and  the  wilderness, 
who  are  constantly  making  raids  on  the  farms,  driving 
off  and  killing  the  cattle  for  sacrifice  and  for  food,  and 
ruining  the  fields  by  destroying  the  irrigating  works  on 
which  their  fertility  depends.  And  there  is  a  religious 
difference  as  well  as  a  difference  in  culture  between 
these  two  sets  of  people.  The  agriculturists  are  wor- 
shippers of  Ahura;  the  contemners  of  the  cattle  worship 
beings  called  in  the  Gathas  "  daevas."  This  schism 
was  not  of  Zarathustra's  making,  he  found  it  going  on, 
and  being  a  priest  was  entitled  to  come  forward  and 
seek  to  guide  others  with  regard  to  it.  Such  is  the 
situation  which  the  hymns  present  to  us.  We  will  try 
to  state  the  substance  of  some  of  those  hymns.  The 
naked  words  of  them,  even  when  we  are  sure  of  the 
correctness  of  the  translation,  are  barely  intelligible 
without  lengthy  commentary ;  and  on  the  other  hand, 
no  short  statement  in  modern  terms  can  convey  the 
force  and  solemnity  of  these  struggling  utterances. 
As   we   are    dealing   with    the    original    revelation    of 


CHAP.  XXI  Persia  389 

Zarathustra,  the  source  of  the  Persian  religion,  we 
shall  give  the  story  with  some  degree  of  detail. 

The  first  hymn  in  the  arrangement  presented  to  us 
in  S.  B.  E.  deals  with  what  we  may  term  the  call  of 
Zarathustra.  It  sums  up  in  a  poetic  and  dramatic 
form  the  religious  result  of  the  movement  which  led 
him  to  come  forward. 

The  "  Soul  of  the  Kine  "  first  speaks  ;  it  is  the  im.per- 
sonation  of  the  agricultural  community,  to  whom  their 
cattle  are  most  sacred.  She  raises  a  complaint  to  Ahura 
and  Asha  (the  righteousness  which  is  an  attribute  of 
Ahura,  and  like  his  other  attributes  often  appears  as 
an  independent  person)  of  the  insolence  and  high- 
handed devastation  and  robbery  she  has  to  suffer. 
"  For  whom  did  ye  fashion  me,"  she  says  ;  "  wherefore 
was  I  made?"  She  appeals  to  the  Immortals  for 
instruction  in  tillage  with  a  view  to  security  and 
welfare. 

Ahura  then  speaks  and  asks  Asha  what  guardian 
has  been  appointed  for  the  kine  to  lead  and  to  defend 
her ;  and  Asha  answers  that  no  one,  himself  free  from 
passion  and  violence,  could  be  found  who  was  capable 
of  being  an  adequate  guardian.  The  causes  of  these 
evils  lie  at  the  roots  of  the  constitution  of  things,  and 
therefore  those  seeking  success  in  any  enterprise  must 
approach  Ahura  himself  and  not  any  subordinate  being. 

Zarathustra  speaks,  and  confirms  the  utterances  of 
Asha ;  it  is  in  Ahura  himself  that  he  and  the  kine 
place  their  confidence ;  to  his  will  they  submit  them- 
selves ;  the  doubts  and  questions  arising  from  their 
outward  insecurity,  they  refer  to  him. 

Ahura  speaks  and  answers  his  own  question.  It  is 
true  that  no  lord  of  the  kine  is  to  be  found,  who  in 
himself  is  quite  equal  to  that  position,  but  he  appoints 
Zarathustra  as  head  to  the  agricultural  community. 

A  chorus  speaks,  consisting  of  a  company  of  the 
faithful  supposed  to  be  present,  or  of  the  Ameshospends, 
the  personified  attributes  of  Ahura,  and  praise  the  Lord 


390  History  of  Religion  part  iv 

for  his  bounty  and  for  the  wisdom  he  makes  known  ; 
but  asks  whom  he  has  endowed  with  the  Good  Mind, 
or,  as  we  might  say,  the  Holy  Spirit,  to  make  known 
to  mortals  his  doctrine.  The  call  of  Zarathustra,  in- 
timated in  the  foregoing  verse,  is  overlooked,  as  if  it 
were  impossible  that  such  a  one  as  he  could  undertake 
the  office.  Ahura  replies,  repeating  his  commission  to 
Zarathustra,  here  called  also  by  his  family  name  of 
Spitama,  and  promising  to  establish  him  and  -make 
him  successful  in  his  work. 

The  Soul  of  the  Kine  speaks,  lamenting  still  that 
no  adequate  lord  has  been  assigned  her.  Zarathustra 
is  a  feeble  and  pusillanimous  man,  not  one  of  royal 
state  who  is  able  to  bring  his  purpose  to  effect.  The 
Ameshospends  join  in  the  cry  for  the  true  lord  to 
appear. 

Zarathustra  then  speaks,  accepting  the  mission  in  an 
address  to  Ahura,  whom  he  entreats  to  send  his  bless- 
ings of  peace  and  happiness,  since  none  but  he  can 
give  them,  and  to  set  up  in  the  minds  of  the  disciples 
of  the  cause  that  joy  and  that  kingdom  which,  though 
it  first  comes  inwardly,  yet  brings  with  it  also  all 
outward  blessings.  For  himself  also  he  prays  that  the 
Good  Mind  and  the  Sovereign  Power  (another  of  the 
attributes)  of  the  Lord  may  hasten  to  come  to  him 
and  strengthen  him  for  his  mission. 

This  poetical  rendering  of  the  call  of  Zarathustra  is 
free  both  from  miraculous  embellishment  and  from 
undue  exaltation  of  the  person  of  the  prophet,  and 
forms  a  great  contrast  to  later  statements  in  the  Avesta, 
where  the  prophet  is  placed  in  secret  conclave  with 
Ahura,  asking  him  questions  and  receiving  detailed 
replies  which  at  once  rank  as  revelation.  In  the 
Gathas,  allowing  for  the  theological  and  poetic  form, 
everything  is  human  and  natural.  We  are  strongly 
reminded  of  the  accounts  of  the  calls  of  prophets  in 
the  Old  Testament — there  is  the  same  choice  by  the 
deity  oi  an  apparently  weak  instrument  to  accomplish 


CHAP.   XXI 


Persia  391 


a  work  urgently  called  for  by  the  times,  the  same  sense 
of  insufficiency  on  the  part  of  the  prophet,  but  the 
same  absolute  confidence  on  his  part  in  the  power  of 
the  deity,  and  hence  the  same  absolute  assurance,  once 
the  mission  is  accepted,  that  the  cause  which  he  has 
been  called  to  carry  forward  must  succeed.  In  many 
of  the  following  Gathas  the  same  parallel  is  strongly 
impressed  on  the  mind  of  the  reader.  The  sense  of 
weakness  is  expressed  again  and  again — the  prophet 
has  no  victorious  career,  but  is  exposed  to  much  gain- 
saying, which  he  feels  acutely.  Yet  he  never  doubts 
that  his  god  is  with  him,  and  is  working  for  him.  To 
him  he  commits  his  doubts  and  fears,  of  his  goodness 
he  is  joyfully  assured,  and  his  aid  he  expects  with 
confidence.  He  is  entirely  devoted  to  Ahura  and  his 
cause,  and  offers  himself  up  with  his  whole  powers  to 
work  out  the  divine  will.  He  will  teach,  he  says,  as 
long  as  he  is  able,  till  he  has  brought  all  the  living 
to  believe.  He  is  conscious  of  a  divine  power  working 
in  him.  Nothing  in  himself,  he  is  strong  by  the  divine 
grace  which  Ahura  sends  him  :  his  words  have  efficacy 
to  keep  the  fiends  at  a  distance,  and  to  advance  in 
men's  minds  the  divine  kingdom ;  like  St.  Paul  he 
feels  his  message  to  be  to  some  a  savour  of  life  unto 
life,  to  others  a  savour  of  death  unto  death. 

The  Doctrine. — And  what  is  the  message  he  pro- 
claims? It  is  a  philosophy  of  the  origin  of  the  world, 
but  a  philosophy  the  acceptance  of  which  involves 
immediate  and  strenuous  action.  The  distracted  con- 
dition of  the  world  before  him  requires  to  be  explained, 
so  that  a  remedy  for  it  may  be  found  ;  and  Zarathustra 
prays,  when  he  is  about  to  bring  forward  his  doctrine, 
that  Ahura  would  help  him  to  explain  how  the  material 
world  arose.  The  explanation  when  it  appears  is  not 
quite  new,  it  has  been  shaping  itself  already  in  the 
mind  of  his  people,  but  he  sets  it  forth  as  a  dogma, 
and  draws  from  it  at  once  all  its  practical  consequences. 
In  the  third  hymn  of  the  first  Gatha  he  solemnly  brings 


392  History  of  Religio7i  part  iv 

forward  his  doctrine  before  the  people,  and  appeals  to 
them,  not  as  a  people,  but  as  individuals,  each  for 
himself,  with  a  full  sense  of  his  responsibility,  to  con- 
sider it,  and  adopt  it,  and  act  upon  it.  It  is  the  doctrine 
of  dualism,  not  in  the  fully  developed  later  form  in 
which  two  personal  potentates  divide  the  universe 
between  them  from  the  first,  but  as  yet  in  a  form 
more  speculative  and  vague.  There  are  two  primeval 
principles,  spirits,  things,  as  is  well  known — the  ex- 
pression is  indefinite — the  counterparts  of  each  other, 
independent  in  their  action,  a  better  and  a  worse,  and 
Zarathustra  calls  on  his  audience  to  choose  between 
them,  and  not  to  choose  as  do  the  evildoers.  The 
world,  as  it  is,  was  made  by  the  joint  action  of  the  two 
principles,  and  they  also  fixed  the  alternative  fates  of 
men,  for  the  wicked.  Hell — the  worst  life ;  and  for 
the  holy,  Heaven — the  best  mental  state.  After  the 
creation  was  accomplished,  the  two  principles  drew 
off  from  each  other,  the  evil  one  making  choice  of 
evil  and  of  evil  works,  and  the  bounteous  spirit  choosing 
righteousness,  making  his  strong  seat  in  heaven,  and 
taking  for  his  own  those  who  do  good  and  who  believe 
in  him.  The  Daevas  and  their  followers  are  incapable 
of  making  a  just  choice  between  the  good  and  the  evil; 
they  have  surrendered  themselves  from  the  outset  to 
the  "  Worst  Mind,"  the  demon  of  fury,  and  to  all  evil 
works.  (There  are  vague  suggestions  here  of  a  tempta- 
tion and  a  fall,  but  only  of  the  evil  spirits  and  their 
followers.)  From  this  point  onwards  the  world  is  filled 
with  a  great  struggle.  On  the  one  side  is  Ahura,  the 
only  god  worshipped  by  name  in  the  Gathas.  Ahura 
is  a  heaven-god,  he  is,  in  fact,  the  bright  heaven,  and 
then  the  good  and  beneficent  being  who  dwells  in 
brightness.  In  the  hymns  he  is  losing  his  definite 
character  and  becoming  an  abstraction,  a  god  of  dog- 
matics rather  than  of  history.  He  is  the  good  principle 
personified,  and  as  becomes  a  god  of  such  transcendent 
character,  he   does   not   act   directly,  but   through  his 


CHAP.  XXI  Persia  393 

satellites.  His  attributes  personified,  do  his  bidding, 
aid  the  saints  in  spiritual  ways,  and  prepare  for  the 
better  order  of  things.  On  the  other  hand  are  the 
Daevas  with  the  demon  of  wrath,  who  propagate  every- 
where lies  and  mischief,  and  heap  up  vengeance  for 
themselves  against  the  final  judgment.  For  the  good 
there  is  nothing  better  than  to  aid, — for  they  can  aid, 
in  bringing  on  the  renovation,  dwelling  with  Ahura 
even  now,  and  by  his  attributes  which  work  in  them 
as  well  as  in  him,  reinforcing  the  righteous  order,  and 
preparing  themselves  to  dwell  where  wisdom  has  her 
home.  In  the  end  the  Demon  of  the  Lie  will  be 
rendered  harmless  and  delivered  up  to  Righteousness 
as  a  captive. 

Inconsistencies. — As  it  happens  in  every  such  reform, 
the  new  teaching  is  not  quite  consistent  with  itself; 
old  views  are  taken  up  into  the  new  teaching,  although 
they  do  not  harmonise  with  it ;  the  spiritual  way  of 
looking  at  things  alternates  with  a  more  worldly  way. 
The  following  are  some  examples  of  this : — The  great 
doctrine  of  Heaven  and  Hell  as  inner  states,  as  being 
simply  the  best  and  the  worst  state  of  mind,  is  clearly 
announced  ;  but  the  traditional  view  of  future  abodes 
of  happiness  and  misery  also  appears.  The  Kinvat- 
bridge  is  mentioned  several  times  in  the  Gathas,  over 
which  Iran  conceived  that  the  individual  had  to  pass 
after  death.  If  he  was  righteous  the  bridge  bore  him 
safely  over  to  the  sacred  mountain,  where  the  good 
lived  again  ;  if  he  was  wicked,  he  fell  off  the  bridge 
and  found  himself  in  the  place  of  torment.  It  is 
another  inconsistency  that  Zarathustra  expects,  on  the 
one  hand,  to  convert  the  world  by  his  preaching,  while 
on  the  other  hand  his  sense  of  the  antagonism  between 
the  good  and  the  evil  spirits  and  their  followers  often 
hurries  him  into  violent  methods.  One  hymn  con- 
cludes with  a  summons  to  his  adherents  to  fall  on  the 
unbelievers  with  the  halberd,  and  he  is  constantly  pre- 
dicting their  sudden  overthrow.     Along  with  this,  we 


394  History  of  Religion  part  iv 

may  mention  that  he  sought  to  ally  himself  with  power- 
ful families  for  the  sake  of  the  support  they  would 
bring  the  cause.  The  name  of  Vishtaspa,  king  we 
know  not  of  what  realm,  is  always  associated  with  the 
prophet  as  that  of  his  royal  patron ;  other  influential 
friends  are  also  mentioned.  Another  point,  in  which 
we  notice  accommodation  to  existing  usage,  is  that  of 
sacrifice.  The  Gathas  have  several  noble  passages 
describing  the  true  sacrifice  man  has  to  offer  to  God 
for  his  goodness,  as  consisting  simply  in  the  offering 
of  self,  in  the  devotion  to  the  deity  of  all  a  man  is, 
and  all  he  can  do.  At  the  same  time  Zarathustra  has 
not  a  word  to  say  in  disparagement  of  the  sacrifice  of 
victims.  He  prays  for  guidance  in  this  part  of  religious 
duty  ;  he  desires  to  have  everything  connected  with 
sacrifice  done  in  the  best  way  and  with  the  most  effec- 
tive hymns.  Thus  the  spiritual  life  is  not  left  to  stand 
alone.  There  is  a  personal  walk  with  God,  our  piety 
is  said  to  be  God's  daughter  in  us,  his  righteousness 
is  working  in  us  and  moulding  us  for  his  purposes ; 
both  will  and  deed  of  the  good  man  are  attributed  to 
him,  and  the  processes  are  described  with  true  insight 
by  which  the  soul  is  sanctified  and  wedded  to  her 
task  and  her  true  destiny  ;  but  at  the  same  time  there 
is  an  intent  looking  to  that  sacred  Fire  which  is  an 
outward  representative  of  deity ;  there  is  the  offering 
of  victims,  even  of  horses,  when  the  prophet's  mind  is 
bent  on  war  (the  Homa-offering  does  not  occur,  and 
we  may  suppose  the  prophet  rejected  this  service  of 
the  deity  by  intoxication) ;  there  is  the  smiting  of  the 
demons  with  prayer,  and  imprecations,  similar  to  those 
in  the  Psalms,  against  adversaries  of  the  cause. 

It  is  no  proof  of  unspirituality  that  the  welfare  of 
the  Kine,  with  whose  wail  the  call  of  the  prophet 
began,  is  steadily  kept  in  view  during  his  mission.  The 
agriculturists  are  on  the  side  of  the  righteous  being, 
good  and  ever-better  tillage  is  a  means  of  pleasing 
him  ;  it  is  his  will  that  the  kine  should  be  freed  from 


CHAP.  XXI  Persia  395 

alarms  and  should  prosper ;  and  he  may  be  appealed  to 
to  give  lessons  with  a  view  to  that  end.  The  doctrine 
passes  far  beyond  its  first  occasion ;  yet  the  occasion 
which  called  for  it  is  never  lost  sight  of. 

The  Gathas,  taken  alone,  tell  us  hardly  anything  of 
the  religion  in  which  Zarathustra's  fellow-countrymen 
believed.  They  believed  undoubtedly  in  many  gods ; 
in  those  parts  of  the  Avesta  which  come  next  to  the 
hymns  in  time,  polytheism  is  in  full  force.  That 
Zarathustra  only  speaks  of  one  god,  Ahura  (though  he 
also  speaks  of  "the  Immortals"  generally),  may  be  due 
to  the  limited  extent  and  special  purpose  of  the  hymns, 
but  it  may  also  be  taken  as  an  indication  that  the 
prophet  did  not  needlessly  interfere  with  the  beliefs  of 
his  people :  content  to  preach  the  doctrine  with  which 
he  was  charged,  and  which  was  to  him  the  sum  and 
substance  of  all  religion,  he,  like  several  other  religious 
founders,  stirred  up  no  strife  he  could  avoid.  The 
doctrine  he  preached  was  not  unprepared  for  in  the 
mind  of  his  country,  and  continued  to  be  the  leading 
feature  of  Persian  religion  in  subsequent  periods. 

It  is  a  momentous  step  in  religious  progress,  which 
the  prophet  of  Iran  calls  on  his  countrymen  to  take. 
We  notice  the  main  features  of  the  advance. 

I.  Man  is  Called  to  Judg-e  between  the  Gods. — 
Zarathustra,  like  Elijah,  puts  before  his  people  the 
choice  between  two  worships.  Various  distinctions 
between  the  two  cases  might  be  drawn.  In  the 
Scripture  case  Baal  is  not  a  bad  god,  but  simply  the 
wrong  god  for  Israel  to  worship.  In  the  case  of  our 
reformer  the  difference  between  the  two  worships  is 
a  deeper  one.  The  individual  is  to  choose  his  god, 
he  is  to  declare  of  his  own  motion  that  one  god  is 
better  than  others,  and  that  no  worship  whatever  is 
to  be  paid  to  these  others.  This  was  a  new  departure 
in  antiquity  ;  the  early  world  loved  to  think  of  many 
gods,  all  alike  divine  and  worshipful,  each  race  or 
clan  having  its  god  whom  it  naturally  served,  or  each 


39^  History  of  Religion  part  iv 

part  of  the  earth  being  portioned  out  to  a  divine  lord 
of  its  own.  Neither  Greece  nor  Rome  ever  thought 
of  making  the  individual  man  the  arbiter  among  the 
unseen  beings  whom  he  knew,  and  requiring  him  to 
decide  which  of  them  he  should  consider  divine,  and 
which  he  should  disown.  In  the  case  before  us,  more- 
over, the  choice  is  to  be  made  on  moral  grounds. 
Men  are  called  to  judge  of  the  character  of  the  beings 
who  are  called  gods,  they  are  told  that  there  is  no 
necessity  to  acknowledge  those  of  whom  they  dis- 
approve, they  are  emancipated  from  the  fear  of  hurtful 
and  evil  beings.  There  is  war  in  heaven,  and  men  are 
encouraged  to  take  part  in  that  war,  and  to  cast  off 
allegiance  to  such  powers  as  do  not  make  for  righteous- 
ness. How  there  came  to  be  such  strife  among  the 
gods,  and  how  it  became  necessary  that  men  should 
judge  of  it,  we  have  no  clear  information  ;  we  only 
know  that  the  momentous  step  was  called  for  and 
was  taken. 

The  belief,  however,  remains  even  after  the  decision 
that  there  are  unseen  evil  beings,  who  had  influence 
in  forming  the  constitution  of  things,  and  who  have 
influence  still  over  the  government  of  the  world.  The 
position  taken  up  is  not  monotheism.  The  good  god 
is  not  sole  creator  or  sole  governor  of  the  world,  he  is 
a  limited  being ;  from  the  outset  he  has  only  in  part 
got  his  own  way,  and  he  has  adversaries  in  the  very 
constitution  of  things,  whom  he  cannot  get  rid  of. 
Persian  thought  is  dualistic ;  the  conception  of  an 
Evil  Creator  and  Governor  co-ordinate  with  the  good 
one  differentiates  it  from  the  thought  of  India,  which 
always  tends  to  a  principle  of  unity. 

2.  In  the  second  place,  this  religion  is  essentially 
intolerant  and  persecuting.  Having  chosen  his  side 
in  the  great  war  which  divides  the  universe,  man  can 
only  prosecute  that  war  with  all  his  force ;  he  must 
regard  the  Daevas  and  their  followers  as  his  enemies, 
and  try  to  weaken  and  extinguish  them.     The  general 


CHAP.  XXI  Persia  397 

feeling  of  the  ancient  world  about  differences  in  religion 
was  that  all  religions  were  equally  legitimate,  each 
on  its  own  soil.  The  Jews,  we  know,  shocked  the 
Greeks  and  Romans  greatly  by  denying  this,  and 
maintaining  that  there  was  only  one  true  religion, 
namely,  their  own,  and  that  all  the  others  were  worships 
of  gods  false  and  vain.  But  the  Persians  came  before 
the  Jews  in  this ;  the  Gathas  preach  persecution,  and 
the  insults  offered  by  Persian  kings  in  later  times  to 
the  religions  of  Egypt  and  Greece  were  no  doubt 
justified  by  their  convictions.  In  Persia,  as  in  Israel, 
religion  had  come  to  entertain  the  notion  of  false 
gods.  And  a  religion  which  entertains  that  notion 
must  be  exclusive.  Those  who  have  refused  to  worship 
beings  hitherto  deemed  gods,  on  the  ground  that  they 
ought  not  to  be  worshipped  and  are  not  truly  gods, 
cannot  but  desire  to  bring  the  worship  of  such  beings 
entirely  to  an  end,  and  to  make  the  worship  of  the 
true  God  prevail  instead,  by  rude  or  by  gentle  means, 
as  the  stage  of  civilisation  may  in  each  case  suggest. 
Growth  of  Mazdeism. — After  the  Gathas  proper  we 
have  other  hymns  written  in  the  Gathic  dialect,  from 
which  the  history  of  the  religion  after  its  foundation 
may  be  to  some  extent  inferred.-^  These  show  that 
the  Zarathustrian  religion  was  regarded,  after  the 
departure  of  the  founder,  as  a  great  divine  institution, 
and  was  worked  out  on  the  lines  he  had  laid  down. 
The  forms  of  it  became  of  course  more  fixed.  The 
god  it  serves  is  now  called  "  Ahura  Mazda,"  the  All- 
Knowing  Lord"  (the  name  is  afterwards  contracted 
into  the  Greek  Oromazdes,  the  Persian  Hormazd  ;  and 
the  religion  is  called  from  it  Mazdeism) ;  he  is  still  im- 
plored for  spiritual  blessings  both  for  this  and  for  the 
future  life,  and  for  furtherance  in  agriculture.  Theie 
is,  however,  a  tendency  to  address  prayer  not  only 
to  Ahura  himself  but  to  beings  connected  with  him, 

'   Yasna   Haptanghaiti,   S.    B.    E.    xxxi.   p.    218,    sqq.,    and    others 
following. 


398  History  of  Religion  part  iv 

As  if  the  mind  wearied  of  dwelling  on  the  one  supreme, 
the  Bountiful  Immortals  are  associated  with  him,  the 
parts  of  his  holy  creation  are  invoked,  the  fire  which 
is  most  closely  identified  with  him,  the  stars  which 
are  his  body,  the  waters,  the  earth,  all  good  animals 
and  plants.  The  kine's  soul  receives  sacrifice,  and 
not  only  the  kine's  soul  which  we  have  met  before, 
but  the  souls  of  "just  men  and  holy  women,"  the 
Fravashis  or  spirits  not  only  of  the  departed  but  of 
the  living  also,  the  service  of  which  continues  and 
increases  henceforward  in  Persian  religion.  These  are 
invented  deities  and  have  a  shadowy  character ;  but 
gods  of  more  substance,  and  more  historical  reality 
also  came  into  view  at  this  point.  Zarathustra  becomes 
a  god,  the  hymns  themselves  are  adored  ;  the  Homa- 
ofifering  reappears,  Mithra  is  often  coupled  with  Ahura, 
other  old  gods  creep  back  and  are  mentioned  along 
with  the  moral  abstractions,  which  also  increase  in 
number ;  in  one  passage  there  are  said  to  be  thirty- 
three  objects  of  worship,  a  number  which  also  occurs 
in  India. 

Org-anisation  of  the  Heavenly  Being's — With  all 
this  multiplication  there  is,  as  we  shall  see,  no  com- 
promise of  the  supreme  claims  of  Ahura.  In  some  of 
the  hymns,  all  beings,  all  attributes,  all  places,  and  all 
times  of  a  sacred  nature  are  heaped  indiscriminately 
together,  in  interminable  catalogues.  But  this  apparent 
confusion  is  corrected  by  a  remarkable  tendency  to 
organisation.  The  Persian  religion  ultimately  came  to 
have  a  very  simple  and  very  striking  theology ;  and 
that  theology  was  made  up  by  transforming  the 
abstractions  in  which  the  founder  dealt,  into  persons, 
and  arranging  them  after  the  pattern  of  Oriental 
society.  In  the  later  Yasnas  (liturgies)  a  figure  rises 
into  view  which  the  Gathas  do  not  mention ;  that  of 
Angra  Mainyu,  later  Ahriman,  the  Bad  Spirit.  In 
this  counterpart  of  Spenta  Mainyu,  the  Good  Spirit 
(who  is  not  at  first  identified  with  Ahura,  but  proceeds 


CHAP.  XXI  Persia  399 

from  him),  the  demons  obtain  a  personal  head,  and 
the  dualism  which  appears  in  all  nature  and  all  human 
society  is  thus  brought  to  a  personal  expression. 
Ahura  and  Ahriman  confront  each  other  as  the  good 
power  and  the  evil.  Both  alike  had  part  in  making  the 
world  what  it  is.  In  every  part  of  the  world,  and  in 
all  that  is  felt  and  done  they  are  at  strife.  Ahura,  to 
quote  Mr  Darmesteter,  is  all  light,  truth,  goodness, 
and  knowledge;  Angra  Mainyu  is  all  darkness,  false- 
hood, wickedness,  and  ignorance.  Whatever  the  good 
spirit  makes,  the  evil  spirit  mars ;  he  opposes  every 
creation  of  Ahura's  with  a  plague  of  his  own,  it  is  he 
who  mixed  poison  with  plants,  smoke  with  fire,  sin 
with  man,  and  death  with  life. 

The  Attributes  of  Ahura. — Each  of  these  beings  has 
his  retinue.  That  of  Ahura  was  formed  first ;  it  con- 
sists of  his  attributes.  Even  in  the  hymns  the  attributes 
are  regarded  as  persons,  inseparable  companions  of 
Ahura ;  appeals  are  made  to  one  or  another  of  them, 
according  as  the  worshipper  seeks  help  from  one  side 
or  the  other  of  the  divine  being.  By  a  process  which 
frequently  occurs  in  religious  thought,  they  afterwards 
come  to  be  more  formally  arranged  and  defined  ;  there 
are  six  of  them,  and  each  is  charged  with  a  province 
of  the  divine  economy.     They  are  as  follows  : 

Vohu  Mano  (Bahman)  Good  Mind  ;  he  is  the  head 
and  the  guardian  of  the  living  creation  of 
Ahura. 

Asha  Vahista  (Ardibehlsht),  Excellent  Holiness ;  he 
is  the  genius  of  fire. 

Kshathra  Vairya  (Shahrevar),  Perfect  Sovereignty;  he 
is  the  lord  of  metals. 

Spenta  Armaiti  (Spendarmat)  divine  piety,  conceived 
as  female,  the  goddess  of  the  earth. 

Haurvatat  (Khordat)  health. 

Ameretat  (Amerdat)  immortality. 

The  last  two  are  a  pair,  and  have  charge  conjointly 
of  waters  and  of  trees. 


400  History  of  Religion  part  iv 

Ahura  is  himself  one  of  these  spirits  ;  thus  there  are 
seven  supreme  spirits. 

Retinue  of  Ahriman. — Angra  Mainyu  on  his  part 
comes  to  have  a  corresponding  retinue  of  six  daevas,  each 
being  the  evil  counterpart  of  one  of  the  good  spirits. 
Evil  Mind,  Sickness,  and  Decay  are  the  names  of  some 
of  them.  The  whole  spiritual  world  is  ranged  on  the  side 
of  the  good  or  of  the  evil  deity.  The  Izatas  (Izeds)  or 
angels  consist  of  gods  of  immemorial  worship  in  Iran, 
some  of  whom  r.re  the  same  as  gods  worshipped  in 
India ;  but  the  title  also  applies  to  gods,  heavenly  and 
earthly,  of  later  creation,  so  that  the  class  is  a  very 
wide  and  elastic  one.  It  comprises  some  beings  who 
have  been  reduced  by  the  operation  of  the  new  ideas 
from  the  first  to  the  second  rank  of  deities,  such  as 
Verethragna,  who  corresponds  to  the  Vedic  Indra,  and 
Mithra,  the  sun-god.  These  now  appear  in  the  same 
rank  as  gods  of  the  newer  style,  such  as  Sraosha, 
Obedience,  and  survivals  of  early  superstition,  such 
as  the  "Curse  of  the  wise,"  a  very  powerful  I  zed. 
Zarathustra  himself  belongs  to  this  class  of  deities,  a 
miscellaneous  one  indeed.  Another  class  of  sacred 
beings  of  world-wide  extent  is  that  of  the  Fravashis 
spoken  of  above.  If  the  good  spirits  are  many  and 
various,  so  are  the  evil.  Of  these  are  the  great  demon- 
serpent  Azhi  who  plays  a  great  part  in  Persian 
mythology,  as  Vrittra  does  in  Indian.  Aeshma,  later 
Asmodeus,  may  be  named  ;  he  is  one  of  the  Drvants, 
or  storm-fiends.  Gahi,  an  unfaithful  goddess,  has  fallen 
to  a  demon  of  unchastity  ;  the  Pairikas  (Peris)  are 
female  tempters ;  the  Yatu  are  demons  connected 
with  sorcery. 

The  firm  organisation  of  these  hosts  of  spiritual 
beings,  and  the  sense  of  a  great  conflict  in  which  they 
are  all  engaged  from  the  greatest  to  the  least  of  them, 
preserve  Mazdeism  from  the  weakness  and  absurdity 
which  are  apt  to  creep  over  religion  when  the  popula- 
tion  of  the   upper   and   the   nether  regions  is  unduly 


CHAP.  XXI  Persia  401 

multiplied.  The  faithful  never  forget  Ahura  in  favour 
of  the  minor  deities,  nor  do  they  forget  that  morals 
and  industry  are  the  chief  ends  of  religion,  and  that 
in  cultivating  these  they  hasten  the  coming  of  the 
kingdom.  The  following  is  the  formula,  the  "  Praise 
of  Holiness,"  with  which  every  act  of  worship  begins 
in  the  Yasts  ^  (liturgies  of  the  Izeds) : 

May  Ahura  Mazda  be  rejoiced  ! 
Holiness  is  the  best  of  all  good  ! 

I  confess  myself  a  worshipper  of  Mazda,  a  follower  of  Zarathustra, 
one  who  hates  the  daevas  and  obeys  the  laws  of  Ahura. 

Ancient  Testimonies  to  the  Persian  Religrion. — It  is 

at  this  stage,  while  it  is  still  in  a  state  of  vigour,  that  we 
hear  of  the  Persian  religion  from  various  quarters  in 
ancient  records.  The  chapters  in  the  latter  half  of 
Isaiah,  which  so  vigorously  denounce  idolatry,  hail  the 
approach  of  Cyrus  towards  Babylon,  and  claim  unity  of 
religion  between  him  and  the  Jews  (Isaiah  xliv.  28  sq?). 
He  is  the  shepherd  who  is  to  lead  Jehovah's  people 
back  to  their  own  land,  and  to  cause  their  temple  to 
be  rebuilt.  And  this  claim  that  the  Jewish  and  the 
Persian  religions  were  the  same,  that  the  Jews  and  the 
Persians  were  alike  worshippers  of  the  one  true  God, 
while  all  the  surrounding  nations  were  polytheists  and 
idolaters,  was  admitted  on  the  side  of  Persia.  After 
his  conquest  of  Babylon,  Cyrus  at  once  permitted  the 
exiles  to  return  to  their  own  land.  The  Persian  mon- 
archs  of  the  following  century,  Darius  and  Artaxerxes, 
continued  to  take  a  friendly  interest  in  the  worship  of 
Jehovah,  whom  they  apparently  regarded  as  a  form  of 
their  own  god,  "the  God  of  heaven,"  Hormazd  (Ezra 
vii.  21).  They  accordingly  took  measures  for  the 
rebuilding  of  the  temple  at  Jerusalem,  and  for  the 
introduction  there  of  the  new  religious  constitution 
which  had  been  prepared  at  Babylon.  This  could  not 
have  happened  if  the  religion  of  the  Persian  kings  had 

1  S.  B.  E.  vol.  xxiii. 
2  C 


402  History  of  Religion  part  iv 

not  been  a  pure  service  of  one  god,^  and  the  other 
information  we  have  on  the  subject  shows  that  the 
Mazdeism  of  Persia  at  this  period  was  a  very  elevated 
form  of  the  religion.  The  inscriptions  of  Darius  do 
not  mention  the  spread  of  the  worships  of  Mitra  and 
Anahita,  which,  however,  make  their  appearance  in  the 
later  inscriptions  of  Artaxerxes ;  in  none  of  them  is 
Ahriman  spoken  of.  This,  of  course,  does  not  prove 
that  he  was  not  believed  in ;  when  the  Jewish  prophet 
proclaims  that  Jehovah  makes  both  light  and  darkness, 
that  he  both  wounds  and  heals,  there  may  be  a  reference 
to  Persian  dualism.  Yet  Mazdeism  was  capable  of 
appearing,  and  did  appear  to  the  foreigner,  as  a  lofty 
worship  of  a  god  of  light  and  goodness.  The  same 
impression  is  produced  by  the  descriptions  of  the  Greek 
writers.  Herodotus  (i.  131,  132)  writes  as  follows;  he 
is  a  contemporary  of  Ezra :  "  The  following  statements 
as  to  the  customs  of  the  Persians  is  to  be  relied  on. 
They  do  not  fashion  images  of  the  gods,  nor  build 
temples,  nor  altars — they  consider  it  wrong  to  do  so, 
and  count  it  a  proof  of  folly ;  their  reason  for  this 
being,  as  I  think,  that  they  do  not  believe  the  gods 
to  be  beings  of  the  same  nature  with  men  as  the 
Greeks  do.  They  are  accustomed  to  offer  sacrifices 
to  Zeus  on  the  summits  of  mountains  ;  they  call  the 
whole  circle  of  heaven  Zeus.  They  sacrifice  also  to 
the  sun,  and  the  moon,  and  the  earth,  and  to  fire,  and 
to  water,  and  to  the  winds.  These  are  the  ancient 
parts  of  their  ritual,  but  they  have  added  the  worship 
of  the  Queen  of  heaven.  Aphrodite ;  it  was  from  the 
Assyrians  and  the  Arabs  that  they  acquired  this.  The 
Assyrian  name  for  Aphrodite  is  Mylitta,  the  Arabs  call 
her  Alilat,  the  Persians,  Anahita.^  Such  being  their 
gods  the  Persians  sacrifice  to  them  on  this  wise.     They 

^  These  two  religions,  Kuenen  says,  were  more  like  each  other  than  any 
other  two  religions  of  antiquity. — Reli,i;!07i  of  Israel,  iii.  33. 

2  Herodotus  says  Mitra  ;  but  this  is  a  mistake,  whether  of  the  father  of 
history  or  of  a  transcriber. 


CHAP.  XXI  '        Persia  403 

have  no  altar,  and  do  not  use  fire  in  sacrifice,  nor  do 
they  have  libations  nor  flutes,  nor  wreaths  nor  barley. 
He  who  wishes  to  sacrifice  takes  his  victim  to  a  clean 
spot  and  there  calls  on  the  deity,  his  turban  wreathed, 
as  a  rule,  with  myrtle.  He  does  not  think  of  praying 
for  benefits  for  himself  individually  in  connection  with 
his  sacrifice ;  he  prays  for  the  welfare  of  the  Persian 
people  and  king;  he  himself  is  one  of  the  Persian 
people.  He  then  cuts  up  the  victim,  boils  the  pieces 
and  spreads  them  out  on  the  softest  grass  he  can  find 
— if  possible,  on  clover.  This  done,  one  of  the  Magians 
who  has  come  to  assist,  sings  a  theogony,i  as  they  call 
the  accompanying  hymn  ;  no  sacrifice  is  allowed  to  be 
offered  without  one  of  the  Magi  being  present.  After 
a  short  pause  the  sacrificer  takes  up  the  pieces  of  flesh 
and  does  with  them  whatever  he  likes." 

In  other  passages  Herodotus  tells  us  of  the  extreme 
sanctity  attributed  by  the  Persians  to  waters,  to  fire,  and 
to  the  sun.  He  also  tells  us  that  they  regarded  lying  as 
the  worst  possible  offence,  and  next  to  it  falling  into 
debt,  since  the  debtor  is  tempted  to  tell  lies, 

Plutarch  writes  as  follows,  quoting  from  an  earlier 
Greek  writer  of  the  third  century  B.C.:  "  Zoroaster  the 
Magician,^  who  was  5000  years  before  the  war  of  Troy, 
named  the  good  god  Oromazes  and  the  other  Arimonius 
.  .  .  Oromazes  is  engendered  of  the  clearest  and  purest 
light,  Arimonius  of  deep  darkness  ;  and  they  war  one 
upon  another.  The  former  of  these  created  six  other 
gods  (here  follow  the  Amshaspands),  but  the  latter 
produceth  as  many  other  in  number,  of  adverse  opera- 
tion to  the  former.  .  ,  ,  There  will  come  a  time  when 
this  Arimonius,  who  brings  into  the  world  plague  and 
famine,  shall  of  necessity  be  rooted  out  and  utterly 
destroyed  for  ever  .  .  ,  then  shall  men  be  all  in  happy 
estate,  they  shall  need  no  more  food,  nor  cast  any 
shadow  from  them  ;   and  that   god  who  hath  effected 

^  One  of  the  Yashts  in  praise  of  the  particular  deity. 
*  Holland's  translation. 


404  History  of  Religion  part  iv 

all  this  shall  repose   himself  for  a  time,  and    rest   in 
quiet." 

The  Vendidad:  Laws  of  Purity.— These  extracts 
show  the  growth  of  certain  ideas  which  we  have  not 
noticed  before.  The  dualism  is  being  worked  out  more 
in  detail,  other  gods  are  coming  in,  and  the  doctrine 
of  the  sanctity  of  the  elements  has  made  its  appearance. 
That  doctrine  is  the  basis  of  a  new  set  of  ideas  and 
practices  which  we  have  now  to  consider,  those  namely 
which  are  contained  in  the  Vendidad,  one  of  the  later 
works  of  the  Persian  canon.  To  pass  from  the  Gathas 
to  the  Vendidad  is  like  passing  from  Isaiah  to  Leviticus, 
and  the  laws  of  purity  of  Persian  religion  bear  a  strong 
analogy  to  those  of  Judaism.  The  Vendidad  ^  is  com- 
posed principally  of  laws  and  rules  designed  to  direct 
the  faithful  in  the  great  task  of  maintaining  their  ritual 
purity.  The  whole  of  life  is  dominated  in  this  work  by 
the  ideas  of  purity  and  defilement ;  the  great  business 
of  life  is  to  avoid  impurity,  and  when  it  is  contracted 
to  remove  it  in  the  correct  manner  as  quickly  as  possible. 
Purity  here  is  not  primarily  sanitary  or  even  moral ; 
though  such  considerations  were  no  doubt  indirectly 
present.  Impure  is  what  belongs  to  the  bad  spirit, 
whether  because  he  created  it,  as  he  did  certain 
noxious  animals,  or  because  he  has  established  a  hold 
on  it  as  he  does  on  men  at  death.  A  man  is  impure, 
not  because  he  has  exposed  himself  to  the  infection 
of  disease,  not  because  he  has  contracted  a  stain  on  his 
conscience,  but  because  he  has  touched  something  of 
which  a  Daeva  has  possession,  and  so  has  come  under 
the  influence  of  that  Daeva.  Purification,  therefore,  and 
the  act  of  healing  consist  of  exorcisms  of  various  kinds. 
This  notion  of  purity  plays  a  great  part  in  other  old 
religions  also  ;  it  is  here  that  we  see  its  original  meaning 
most  clearly.  Another  great  feature  of  the  doctrine 
of  purity  in  the  Vendidad  is  that  the  elements,  fire, 
earth,  and  water,  are  holy,  and   to  defile  them  in  any 

>  S.  B.  E.  vol.  iv. 


CHAP.  XXI  Persia  405 

way  is  the  most  grievous  of  sins.  As  everything  which 
leaves  the  body  is  unclean,  a  man  must  not  blow  up 
a  fire  with  his  breath,  and  bathing  with  a  view  to  clean- 
liness is  not  to  be  thought  of.  The  disposal  of  the 
dead  was  a  matter  of  immense  difficulty,  since  corpses, 
being  unclean,  could  be  committed  neither  to  Fire  nor 
to  the  Earth.  They  are  ordered  to  be  exposed  naked 
on  a  building  constructed  for  that  purpose  on  high 
ground,  so  that  birds  of  prey  may  devour  them  ;  and 
a  great  part  of  the  Vendidad  is  taken  up  with  directions 
for  purification,  after  a  death  has  taken  place,  of  the 
persons  who  were  in  the  house,  of  the  house  itself, 
of  those  who  carried  the  corpse,  and  of  the  road  they 
travelled,  etc. 

How  this  Doctrine  Entered  Mazdeism. — This  system 
was  not  in  force  in  the  time  of  Darius  and  Artaxerxes 
(when  the  dead  were  buried  or,  as  in  the  case  of  Croesus, 
burned)  though  the  ideas  were  appearing  at  that  period 
on  which  it  is  founded  ;  and  jt  is  plain  that  it  has 
no  necessary  or  vital  connection  with  the  religion  of 
Zarathustra.  But  in  later  Mazdeism  there  are  many 
such  importations.  This  religion,  in  its  course  from 
east  to  west,  came  in  contact  with  beliefs  and  usages 
with  which,  though  foreign  to  its  own  nature,  it  yet 
came  to  terms.  Mazdeism  is  not  originally  a  markedly 
priestly  religion  ;  it  is  thought  that  it  became  so  when 
planted  in  Media.  No  doubt  there  were  germs  in  the 
early  Iranian  religion  of  a  priestly  system.  Zarathustra 
himself  was  a  priest  and  was  favourable  to  due  religious 
observances.  But  it  is  quite  contrary  to  his  spirit  that 
life  should  be  governed  entirely  by  ritual  law.  It  was 
in  Media  that  this  came  to  be  the  case.  The  name  of 
Magi,  originally  perhaps  that  of  a  tribe,  became  in  Media 
the  name  of  the  priesthood,  and  so  furnished  an  addi- 
tional title  for  Mazdeism.  It  is  to  this  stage  of  the 
religion  that  the  priestly  legislation  of  the  Vendidad, 
with  all  its  puritanical  regulation  of  life,  is  to  be  ascribed. 
(The  practice  of  exposing  the  bodies  of  the  dead  to  be 


4o6  History  of  Religion  part  iv 

devoured  by  birds  of  prey  is  probably  of  Scythian 
origin.)  In  this  period  also,  remote  from  the  origin  of 
the  religion,  we  find  a  new  view  of  Zarathustra  himself 
and  of  his  revelation.  In  the  earlier  sources  Zarathustra 
composes  his  hymns  in  a  natural  manner ;  he  is  not 
an  absolute  lawgiver,  but  depends  on  princes  for  the 
carrying  out  of  his  views.  In  the  later  works  the 
revelation  takes  place  in  a  series  of  private  interviews 
between  Ahura  and  Zarathustra ;  the  prophet  puts 
questions  to  the  god,  and  the  god  dictates  in  reply 
sentences  which  are  at  once  promulgated  as  sacred 
laws.  Mazdeism,  like  other  religions,  has  its  wooden 
age,  its  verbal  inspiration,  and  its  priestly  code. 

To  trace  the  lines  by  which  the  influence  of  the 
religion  of  Persia  asserted  itself  in  the  wider  world 
would  be  a  large  enterprise  :  only  a  few  indications  can 
be  given  here.  One  great  service  which  that  religion 
did  to  the  world  was  undoubtedly  that  it  had  sympathy 
with  the  Jews,  and  enabled  Jewish  monotheism  to  take 
a  fresh  start  on  its  way  to  become  a  religion  for 
mankind.  Mazdeism  itself  had  a  tinge  of  universalism  ; 
Zarathustra  expected  his  religion  to  spread  beyond  his 
own  land,  and  it  did  spread  over  all  the  provinces  of  Iran. 
It  never  became  a  world-religion,  but  it  might  have  done 
so  had  it  not  become  swathed  and  choked  in  Magism 
or  had  any  new  movement  arisen  in  it  to  assert  the 
supremacy  of  its  purely  human  over  its  artificial  elements. 
But  Ahura  himself,  perhaps,  was  too  abstract  and 
philosophic  a  god  to  inspire  missionary  ardour ;  it 
needed  a  being  more  firmly  rooted  in  history,  a  god  who 
had  done  more  to  prove  the  energy  and  intensity  of 
his  nature,  and,  further,  a  god  more  undoubtedly  omni- 
potent than  Ahura,  to  establish  a  universal  rule. 

The  interesting  inquiry  remains,  how  far  the  Jewish 
religion  was  modified  by  its  contact  with  the  Persian. 
The  laws  of  purity  in  the  Jewish  priestly  code  find 
a  close  parallel  in  the  Vendidad  ;  but  with  the  Israelites 
the  notion  of  religious  purity  existed,  and  was  worked 


CHAP.  XXI  Persia  407 

out  in  considerable  detail,  as  we  see  from  Deuteronomy, 
before  the  exile,  and  therefore  long  before  the  period  of 
the  Vendidad.  The  belief  in  the  resurrection,  found 
among  the  Jews  after  the  exile,  and  not  before  it,  has 
been  maintained  by  many  to  be  a  loan  from  Persia, 
where  the  belief  in  future  reward  and  punishment  was 
a  settled  thing  from  the  time  of  Zarathustra.  But  the 
Jews  do  not  appear  to  have  grasped  this  belief  all  at 
once  or  fully  formed.  They  arrived  at  it  gradually, 
many  Old  Testament  scholars  affirm,  and  by  spiritual 
inferences  timidly  put  forth  at  first,  from  their  own 
religious  consciousness.  A  belief  which  the  Jewish 
religion  was  capable  of  producing  of  itself  need  not, 
without  clearer  evidence  than  we  possess,  be  regarded 
as  borrowed.  We  are  not  on  much  surer  ground  when 
we  come  to  ask  whether  the  angels  and  demons  of 
Judaism  are  connected  with  those  of  Persia.  This 
belief  also  arises  naturally  in  Judaism,  where  God  came 
to  be  thought  of  as  very  high  and  very  inaccessible,  and 
intermediate  beings  were  therefore  needed.  Some  of 
the  figures  of  the  Jewish  spirit-world  are,  no  doubt,  due 
to  Persia ;  the  Ashmodeus  of  the  book  of  Tobit  is  a 
Persian  figure.  Later  Judaism  is  like  Parsism  in  arrang- 
ing the  heavenly  beings  in  a  hierarchy,  and  assigning 
to  the  chief  angels  special  functions  in  the  administra- 
tion of  God's  kingdom,  and  still  more  so  when  the 
upper  hierarchy  is  confronted  by  a  lower  one  with  a 
great  adversary  and  father  of  lies  at  its  head.  But  this 
takes  place  long  after  the  Persian  contact. 

The  Persian  deities  had,  as  a  rule,  too  little  legend  to 
enable  them  to  be  received  in  other  countries.  Ahura 
does  not  travel.  Anaitis  is  thought  to  have  passed 
into  Greece,  changing  her  name  to  Aphrodite,  but  also 
to  the  severer  Artemis ;  but  she  is  perhaps  not  original 
in  Persia.  The  Persian  god  best  known  in  other  lands 
was  Mithra,  the  sun-god  and  god  of  wisdom.  He  was 
a  favourite  with  the  Roman  armies  in  the  early  empire, 
and   representations  of  him    as   a  hero   in  the  act  of 


4o8  History  of  Relis^ion  part  iv 

slaying  a  bull  in  a  cave  have  been  found  in  many  lands. 
There  were  also  mysteries  connected  with  him,  in  which 
the  candidates  had  to  pass  through  a  great  series  of 
trials  and  hardships.  Persia  influenced  Europe  and 
the  west  of  Asia  at  the  same  period  in  another  way. 
Manicheism,  a  system  which  was  one  of  the  three  great 
universal  religions  of  that  time,  and  had  a  worship  and 
a  priesthood  and  a  sacred  literature  of  its  own,  was 
founded  by  a  native  of  Persia.  He  laboured  at  a 
distance  from  his  own  country,  and  the  doctrines 
he  propounded  came  more  from  Chaldea  than  from 
Persia,  and  consisted  of  great  histories,  like  those  of 
the  Gnostics,  of  the  doings  and  sufferings  of  cosmic 
and  other  persons ;  a  great  struggle  between  the  powers 
of  light  and  those  of  darkness  was  one  of  its  principal 
features.  The  worship  of  this  church  was  spiritual ; 
its  morals  were  in  theory  of  the  purest  and  most  ascetic 
kind,  being  founded  on  a  principle  of  dualism  in  the 
material  world,  and  requiring  much  self-denial  and  long 
fasts.  The  higher  virtue  of  the  system  was  not,  how- 
ever, required  of  the  ordinary  member.  Later  Parsism, 
both  in  Iran  and  in  India,  has  shown  a  disposition  to 
cast  ofif  dualism,  and  to  become,  both  philosophically 
and  practically,  a  monistic  system. 

Books  Recommended 

S.  B.  E.  vols.  iv.,xxiii.  (Darmesteter) ;  xxxi.  (Mills).  7'hc  Ztndavesta, 
vols,  v.,  xviii.,  xxiv.,  xxxvii.,  xlvii.     Pahlavi  Texts  'V..  '^V.  West). 

The  Histories  of  Antiquity  of  Duncker,  Maspero,  and  Zd.  Meyer. 

Haug's  Essays  on  the  Sacred  Language,  Writings,  and  Religion  of  ike 
Parsis.     Second  Edition,  1878. 

F.  Windischmann,  Zoroastr.  Stiidien,  1863. 

Geldner,  "Zoroaster,"  in  Encyclopcedia  Briiannica;  "Zoroaslrianism," 
in  Encyclopadia  Bibl. 

Mills,  A  Study  of  the  Five  Zaraihusirian  Gathas,  1892-94. 

Lehmann,  in  De  la  Saussaye. 

Dadhabai  Naoroji,  The  Par^see  Religion. 

On  Mithraism,  Dieterich  Einc  Mithras-liturgie 

Cumont,  The  Mysteries  0/ Mithra,  1903. 


PART   V 
UNIVERSAL   RELIGION 


CHAPTER   XXII 

CHRISTIANITY 

The  writer  is  aware  that  in  offering  a  chapter  on 
Christianity  at  the  conclusion  of  this  work,  he  attempts 
a  difficult  task.  If  treated  at  all,  Christianity  must  be 
dealt  with  in  the  same  way  as  the  other  religions,  and 
no  assumptions  must  be  made  for  it  which  were  not 
made  for  them.  And  a  view  of  our  own  religion 
written,  not  from  the  standpoint  of  the  faith  and  love 
we  feel  towards  it  but  of  scientific  accuracy,  must 
appear  to  many  pious  Christians  to  be  cold  and  meagre. 
But,  on  the  other  hand,  Christianity  is  the  key  of  the 
arch  we  have  been  building,  the  consummating  member 
of  the  development  we  have  sought  to  trace,  and  to 
withhold  any  estimate  of  its  character  would  be  to 
leave  our  work  most  imperfect.  It  seems  better,  there- 
fore, that  some  hints  at  least  should  be  offered  on  this 
part  of  the  subject.  Christianity  cannot  indeed  be 
dealt  with  in  the  same  proportion  as  the  other  religions ; 
that  would  far  exceed  our  space.  But  some  views  are 
offered  regarding  its  essential  nature,  which  the  writer 
believes  to  be  so  firmly  founded  in  fact  that  even  those 
who  are  not  Christians  cannot  deny  them,  and  thus 
to  afford  a  valid  criterion  for  the  comparison  of  Chris- 
tianity with  other  faiths. 

In  the  chapter  on  the  religion  of  Israel  we  saw 
how  the  prophets  before  and  during  the  exile  began  to 
cherish  the  idea  of  a  new  relation  between  God  and 

411 


412  History  of  Religion  part  v 

man,  which  would  not  depend  on  sacrifice  nor  be  con- 
fined to  Israel.  God,  they  declared,  was  preparing  a 
new  age,  in  which  he  would  receive  man  to  more 
intimate  communion  than  before ;  and  man  would  be 
guided  in  the  right  path,  not  by  covenants  and  laws, 
but  by  the  constant  inspiration  of  a  present  deity. 
The  new  religion  would  be  one  which  all  nations  could 
share.  Jerusalem,  the  seat  of  the  true  faith,  would 
attract  all  eyes ;  all  would  turn  to  her  because  of  the 
Lord  her  God. 

But,  alas,  instead  of  growing  broader  to  realise  its 
universal  destiny,  the  religion  of  Israel  grew  narrower 
after  the  exile,  and  seemed  to  forget  the  prospects  thus 
opened  up  to  it  Judaism,  though  immeasurably  en- 
riched in  its  inner  consciousness  by  the  teaching  of  the 
prophets,  maintained  its  earlier  semi-heathenish  forms 
of  worship,  only  surrounding  them  with  new  stateliness 
and  new  significance ;  and  clothed  itself  in  a  hard  shell 
of  public  ritual  and  personal  observance.  The  Jews 
separated  themselves  rigorously  from  the  world,  and 
cultivated  an  exclusive  pride ;  as  if  their  religion  had 
been  given  them  for  themselves  alone,  and  not  for 
mankind.  Under  the  Maccabees  they  displayed  the 
most  heroic  courage  and  tenacity,  maintaining  their 
own  beliefs  and  rites  amid  the  flood  of  Hellenism  which 
at  one  time  almost  swept  them  away.  That  they  carried 
their  nationality  unimpaired  through  this  period  is  one 
of  the  most  wonderful  achievements  of  the  Jewish  race. 
In  the  succeeding  period,  however,  many  signs  appeared 
showing  that  their  rehgion  was  losing  energy.  The  rule 
of  the  priests  and  scribes  extended  more  and  more  over 
the  whole  of  life,  tradition  and  observance  grew  more 
and  more  extensive,  but  the  moral  judgment  lost  its 
elasticity.  The  sense  of  the  divine  presence  grew  faint, 
and  multitudes  of  spirits  filled  the  air  instead,  oppres- 
sing human  life  with  a  sense  of  vague  anxiety.  As 
political  independence  was  lost,  the  people  became  less 
happy  and  more  easily  excited.     But  while  formalism 


CHAP.  XXII  Christianity  413 

held  increasing  sway  over  their  actions,  imagination 
was  free,  and  surrounded  both  the  past  history  of  Israel 
and  its  future  triumphs  with  manifold  embellishments. 

In  such  a  condition  was  the  religion  of  the  Jews 
when  Jesus  appeared  in  Palestine  and  created  a  new 
order  of  things.  Christianity  was  at  first  a  movement 
within  Judaism.  Like  all  the  religions  which  trace 
their  history  to  personal  founders,  it  grew  from  very 
small  beginnings  ;  but  its  doctrine  was  of  such  a 
nature,  that  if  circumstances  favoured,  it  could  not 
fail  to  spread  beyond  Judaism,  to  men  of  other  lands 
and  other  tongues. 

The  doctrine  consisted  primarily  in  a  declaration 
that  that  great  religious  consummation,  the  kingdom 
of  God,  which  the  prophets  had  foretold,  which  was 
regarded  by  the  fellow-countrymen  of  Jesus  as  a  far- 
off  hope,  and  which  had  just  been  heralded  by  John 
the  Baptist  as  being  immediately  at  hand,  had  actually 
taken  place.  The  perfect  state  was  announced  to 
have  arrived,  and  to  be  a  thing  not  of  the  future  but 
of  the  present.  The  long-expected  intercourse  of  God 
and  man  on  new  terms  of  perfect  agreement  and 
sympathy,  had  come  into  operation ;  any  one  who 
chose  could  assure  himself  of  the  fact.  The  title  by 
which  Jesus  described  the  intimate  relationship  of  man 
and  God  which  he  announced,  sufficiently  shows  its 
character.  God  is  the  Father  in  heaven ;  men  are 
his  children,  and  all  that  men  have  to  do  is  to  realise 
that  this  is  so,  to  enter  the  circle  and  begin  to  live 
with  God  on  such  terms.  The  great  God  seeks  to 
have  every  one  living  with  him  as  his  child ;  and 
religion  is  no  more,  no  less,  than  this  communion. 
Father  and  child  dwell  together  in  perfect  love  and 
confidence ;  no  outward  regulations  are  needed  for 
their  intercourse,  no  bargains,  no  traditions,  no  ritual, 
no  pilgrimage,  no  sacrifice.  The  intercourse  can  be 
carried  on  by  any  one,  anywhere.  It  is  not  a  matter 
of  apparatus,  but   a   purely  moral  affair,  an  affair   of 


414  History  of  Religion  part  v 

love.  The  Father  knows  all  about  the  child,  is  able 
to  give  him  all  he  needs,  even  before  he  asks  it ;  is 
willing  to  forgive  his  sins  when  he  repents  of  them  ; 
is  anxious  above  all  to  reinforce  his  efforts  after  eood- 
ness.  The  child  knows  that  the  Father  is  always 
near  him,  carries  every  need  and  wish  to  him  in 
prayer,  even  though  knowing  that  he  is  aware  of 
them  beforehand ;  regards  all  that  happens,  either 
good  or  ill,  as  sent  by  him  for  the  best  ends,  and 
seeks  in  every  case  to  know  his  will  and  to  submit 
to  it  sweetly,  and  execute  it  faithfully. 

Nothing  could  be  simpler,  or  deeper,  or  broader. 
Religion  is  here  presented  free  from  all  local  or 
accidental  or  obscuring  elements ;  religion  itself  is 
here  revealed.  Accepted  in  this  form,  it  does  for 
man  all  that  it  can.  The  relation  between  God  and 
man  is  made  purely  moral ;  the  link  is  not  that  of 
race,  nor  does  it  consist  in  anything  external.  The 
individual — every  individual  who  will  pause  to  hear — • 
is  assured  that  there  exists  between  God  and  him  a 
natural  sympathy,  and  is  urged  to  allow  that  sympathy 
to  have  its  way.  It  is  easy  to  see  what  effect  such 
a  belief  must  have.  The  individual,  bidden  to  seek 
the  principle  of  union  with  God  not  in  any  external 
circumstance  or  arrangement,  but  in  his  own  heart, 
becomes  conscious  of  an  inner  freedom  from  all  artificial 
restraints.  He  finds  in  his  own  heart  the  secret  of 
happiness,  and  is  raised  above  all  fears  and  irritations ; 
and  hence  the  forces  of  his  nature  are  encouraged  to 
unfold  themselves  freely.  He  sees  clearly  what  as  a 
human  person  he  is  called  to  be  and  to  do,  and  feels 
a  new  energy  to  realise  his  ideals.  As  God  has  come 
down  to  him,  he  is  lifted  up  to  God  ;  a  divine  power 
has  entered  his  life,  which  is  able  to  do  all  things  in 
him  and  for  him. 

It  may  be  said  that  what  we  have  described  are 
the  effects  of  religious  inspiration  generally,  and  may 
take  place    in    connection    with    any   faith.      But   the 


CHAP,  xxii  Christianity  4^5 

divine  impulse  communicated  to  mankind  in  Christianity 
differs  from  that  of  any  other  reHgion  in  two  important 
respects.     In  the  first.^lace,  the  God  who  here  enters 
into  union  with  man  possesses  full  reality  and  a  character 
of  the  utmost  energy.     It  is  Jehovah  with  whom  we 
have  to  do  here,  changed,  indeed,  but  still  the  same ; 
a  God  of  real  and  irresistible  power,  on  whom  specula- 
tion has  not  laid  its  weakening  hand.     The  union  of 
man  with  God  is  not  secured  by  making  God  abstract 
and  vague,  nor  is  his  infinite  kindness  and  forgivingness 
purchased  at  the  expense  of  his  intensity  and  awfulness. 
With   Jesus,  God    is   still   the   power    who   has    actual 
control  over  everything  that  goes  on,  and  who  is  able 
to  do  even  what  appears  to  be  most  impossible.     He 
is  a  God  of  strict  justice  and  holiness;   though  he  is 
so  kind,  his  judgments  have  not  ceased,  but  are  still 
impending   over  guilty   men    and  a  guilty  people.     It 
is  he  who  can  cast  both  soul  and   body  into  hell.     It 
is   a  God   of  such   energy,   such   zeal,   who   yet   offers 
himself  as   the   willing   benefactor  and  defender,   and 
the   loving  guide  and  helper   of  the   humblest   of  his 
human   creatures.     In   the   second  place,  the  terms  of 
the    union    here   formed   between    God   and   man    are 
such  as  can  be  found  nowhere  else.     The  deity  inspires 
man  not  to  any  particular  kind  of  acts,  not  to  sacrifices, 
nor  to  withdrawal   from   the   world,   but   inspires   him 
simply   to    realise    himself      Man   is    assured   of    the 
sympathy  of  this  great  God,  and  is  then  left  in  freedom 
as   to  the  mode  in  which  he  should  serve  him.      No 
rules  are  prescribed  ;   human    life   is  not  pressed  into 
an  artificial  mould,  as  is  the  case   in   so   many   great 
religions ;  no  preference  is  accorded  to  any  one  pursuit 
over  others.     This   religion   is   not   a   yoke   to   coerce 
men  and  to  make  them  less,  but  an  inspiration  capable 
of  entering  into  every  kind  of  life,  and  of  making  men 
greater    and    better    in    whatever    occupation.      Even 
religious  duties  are  left  to  form  themselves  naturally; 
all   that   is   insisted   on   is   that   the   child   shall    have 


41 6  History  of  Religion  part  v 

living  and  real  intercourse  with  the  Father.  Prayer 
is  necessary,  and  so  is  the  practice  of  good  works ; 
the  child  must  keep  in  sympathy  with  the  Father 
by  doing  as  he  does.  Further  than  this,  the  forms 
of  the  religious  life  are  not  prescribed.  With  regard 
to  morals,  it  is  the  same.  The  moral  life  is  to  build 
itself  up  freely  from  within  ;  goodness  is  not  to  be  a 
matter  of  rule,  but  the  spontaneous  and  happy  develop- 
ment of  a  principle  which  lives  and  speaks  deep  in 
the  centre  of  the  heart.  Jesus  is  not  a  lawgiver,  save 
in  a  metaphorical  sense :  the  law  which  he  sets  up  is 
nothing  more  than  that  which  every  m.an,  when  he  turns 
away  from  all  that  is  artificial,  can  find  in  his  own  breast. 

It  is  one  feature  of  the  spontaneity  and  spirituality 
of  the  religion  of  Jesus,  that  it  has  no  constitution. 
Jesus  regarded  himself  as  the  founder  not  of  a  new 
religion,  but  only  of  an  inner  circle  of  more  devoted 
believers  inside  the  old  religion  of  his  country ;  he 
did  not  therefore  feel  called  to  draw  up  rules  for  a 
new  faith,  and  the  result  of  this  is  that  the  mechanism 
of  the  religion  is  of  later  growth.  The  authority  of 
the  founder  can  be  appealed  to  for  a  direct  and  con- 
stant intercourse  with  God  as  of  a  child  with  his 
father,  and  for  the  conduct  of  men  towards  each  other, 
which  such  intercourse  with  God  necessarily  implies, 
but  for  hardly  anything  more.  Here,  as  in  no  other 
historical  religion,  man  is  free. 

The  religion  of  Jesus,  therefore,  is  one  of  love  alone. 
The  divine  nature  consists  in  love,  and  the  impulse 
which  religion  communicates,  is  simply  that  which 
proceeds  from  being  loved  and  loving.  And  a  religion 
of  love  finds  the  way,  as  no  other  can,  to  make  man 
free,  to  unseal  his  energies,  and  to  lead  him  upwards 
to  the  best  life.  The  appearance  of  such  a  religion 
forms  the  most  momentous  epoch  of  human  history. 
He  who  brought  it  forward  must  occupy  a  unique 
position  in  the  estimation  of  mankind.  It  can  never 
be  superseded. 


CHAP.  XXII  Christianity  417 

It  is  no  doubt  the  case  that  the  doctrine  of  Jesus  was 
not  in  all  respects  new.  The  ideas  of  the  prophets  live 
again  in  him  ;  his  followers  have  always  found  many 
of  the  Jewish  Psalms  to  be  perfectly  suited  to  their 
experience.  Jesus  lived  in  the  faith  of  Israel,  and  con- 
sidered that  he  had  come  only  to  make  that  faith  better 
understood,  and  to  free  it  from  improper  accretions. 
What  was  new  was  his  own  person.  His  great  work 
was  that  he  embodied  his  teaching  in  a  life  which 
expressed  it  perfectly.  It  is  far  short  of  the  truth  to 
say  that  there  was  no  inconsistency  between  what  he 
taught  and  his  own  conduct.  His  life  is  a  demonstra- 
tion, in  every  detail,  of  the  effects  of  his  religion  ;  all 
flows  with  the  utmost  simplicity,  and  even  as  a  matter 
of  necessity,  out  of  the  truth  he  taught.  What  he 
preached  was,  in  fact,  himself;  he  was  himself  living 
in  the  kingdom  of  God,  to  which  he  called  others  to 
come ;  he  knew  in  his  own  experience  what  it  was  to 
live  as  a  child  with  the  Father  in  heaven,  and  to  view 
all  persons,  all  things,  all  duties,  in  the  light  of  that 
intercourse.  All  his  acts  and  words  flowed  from  the 
same  spring  in  his  own  inner  experience.  In  no  other 
way  could  his  life  shape  itself  than  as  it  did,  and  he 
saw  with  perfect  clearness  what  men  must  be,  and  on 
what  terms  they  must  live  together  when  God  and  they 
were  as  Father  and  children  to  each  other.  What  he 
thus  knew  he  lived,  as  if  no  laws  but  those  of  the 
kingdom  of  heaven  had  any  authority  for  him,  and  so 
he  presented  to  the  world  that  living  embodiment 
of  the  true  religion,  which  has  been  the  main  strength 
of  Christianity.  Jesus  announces  a  new  union  of  God 
with  man,  a  union  in  which  he  himself  is  the  first  to 
rejoice,  but  which  all  may  share  along  with  him  ;  and 
hence  his  person  counts  for  more  in  his  religion  than 
that  of  any  other  religious  founder  in  his,  and  neces- 
sarily becomes  an  object  of  faith  to  all  who  enter  the 
communion.  The  doctrine  does  not  produce  its  specific 
effect  apart  from  the  person  of  Jesus.     Because  in  him 

2  D 


41 8  History  of  Religion  part  v 

alone  they  know  the  truth  which  brings  them  peace,  his 
followers  regard  him,  in  a  way  which  has  no  parallel 
in  any  other  religion,  as  their  Saviour. 

But  this  name  is  given  to  him  by  his  followers,  as  it  is 
claimed  by  himself,  for  another  reason  also.  Jesus  was 
more  than  a  teacher.  He  felt  a  power  to  be  present  in 
him  which  was  able  to  supply  all  needs  and  to  comfort 
all  sorrows  ;  he  did  not  shrink  from  summoning  all  who 
were  weary  and  heavy  laden  to  come  to  him,  nor  from 
undertaking  to  give  them  rest.  Keenly  alive  to  the 
sufferings  of  others,  and  able  to  perceive  even  those 
sufferings  of  which  they  were  not  themselves  conscious, 
he  felt  it  to  be  his  mission  to  deal  with  the  sadder  side 
of  human  life ;  he  was  a  physician  sent  to  the  sick,  a 
shepherd  seeking  the  lost  sheep.  It  was  among  the 
poor  and  the  sick,  and  even  among  the  outcasts  of 
society,  in  whom  the  sense  of  need  was  strongest,  that 
he  felt  himself  most  at  home  and  most  able  to  fulfil 
his  calling.  Thus  the  motive  of  compassion  enters 
strongly  into  all  he  said  and  did :  but  the  compassion 
is  not  hopeless  in  this  case  as  in  the  similar  case  of 
Gautama  (pp.  357,  364),  nor  is  the  cure  recommended 
for  the  ills  of  humanity  that  of  withdrawal  from  man- 
kind or  of  forgetfulness.  Here  there  is  a  belief  in  God. 
The  compassion  from  which  the  religion  flows  is  not  as 
in  the  case  of  Gautama,  that  of  a  preacher  who  has 
ceased  to  trust  in  any  heavenly  power ;  it  is  announced 
as  existing  first  of  all  in  the  heart  of  God  Himself 
God  can  do  all  things,  and  in  his  yearning  pity  for  his 
children  has  sent  his  representative  to  assure  them  of 
his  sympathy  and  to  comfort  them  in  their  sorrows. 
With  Jesus  therefore  no  evil  is  so  great  as  not  to  admit 
of  a  positive  cure ;  he  feels  the  remedy  of  all  human 
ills  to  be  present  in  his  own  heart,  and  so  he  appears 
as  the  Messiah,  not  such  a  Messiah  as  his  countrymen 
looked  for,  but  as  the  true  Messiah,  in  whom  all  human 
wants  are  met,  and  all  human  hopes  fulfilled.  The  cure 
/  which  he  announces  for  all  ills  consists  in  devotion  to 


CHAP.  XXII  Christianity  419 

the  will  of  the  Father  in  heaven.  To  give  oneself 
unreservedly  to  the  labour  of  realising  the  purposes  of 
the  heavenly  Father  in  one's  own  heart  and  in  the 
world,  is  to  rise  above  all  cares  and  sorrows;  enthusiasm 
in  the  Father's  service  is  the  sovereign  remedy.  To 
one  who  believes  in  the  Father,  and  seeks  to  live  as 
his  child,  no  despair  is  possible.  To  be  engaged  in  his 
business  is  at  all  times  the  highest  happiness,  and  his 
kingdom  is  assuredly  coming,  though  man  has  still  the 
privilege  of  working  for  it, — the  kingdom  in  which  all 
darkness  and  evil  will  be  put  away. 

We  have  indicated  the  chief  points  which  in  a  scientific 
comparison  of  Christianity  with  other  religions  appear 
to  constitute  its  distinctive  character ;  and  we  have 
sought  to  make  our  statement  such  as  the  reasonable 
adherent  of  other  religions  will  feel  to  be  warranted. 
The  points  are  these.  Christianity  is  a  religion  of 
freedom,  it  is  a  system  of  inner  inspiration  more  than 
of  external  law  or  system,  it  is  embodied  in  the  living  ty' 
person  of  its  founder,  in  which  alone  it  can  be  truly 
seen  ;  and  the  founder  is  one  who  is  living  himself  in 
the  relation  to  God  to  which  he  calls  men  to  come,  and 
feels  himself  called  and  sent  to  be  the  Saviour  of  men. 

It  is  impossible  in  this  work  to  treat  Christianity  on 
the  same  scale  as  the  other  religions  ;  but  the  question 
of  its  universalism  must  necessarily  receive  attention.  /^ 
Jesus  himself  did  not  expressly  say  that  his  religion  was  ^ 
for  all  men.  It  was  his  immediate  aim  to  bring  about 
the  renewal  of  the  faith  of  his  countrymen,  and  to  give 
it  a  more  spiritual  character  ;  and  some  of  his  followers 
considered  that  he  had  aimed  at  nothing  more  than 
this.  But  he  formed  a  circle  of  disciples  and  adherents, 
which  afterwards  came  to  be  the  Christian  Church,  and 
he  attached  no  ritual  condition  whatever  to  member- 
ship in  that  community.  Nay,  more ;  by  his  repudia- 
tion of  the  Jewish  system  of  tradition  he  showed  that 
the  Jewish  laws  of  ritual  purity  were  not  binding  upon 
his  disciples,  and  the  further  inference  could  readily  be 


420  History  of  Religion  part  v 

drawn,  that  one  could  enter  the  Kingdom  without  being 
a  Jew  at  all.  The  strong  missionary  impulse  of  the 
infant  religion  brought  it  very  early  in  contact  with 
Gentile  life,  and  the  question  soon  arose,  whether  those 
who  refused  to  become  Jews  could  yet  claim  a  share  in 
l^  the  Messiah.  It  was  the  task  of  the  Apostle  Paul  to 
work  out  the  theory  of  the  universalism  of  Christianity, 
and  after  some  conflict  the  principle  was  recognised  that 
in  the  Church  all  racial  differences  disappear;  "in  Christ 
there  is  neither  Jew  nor  Greek."  This  controversy  once 
settled — and  a  few  years  sufficed  to  settle  it — the  new 
religion  was  free  to  spread  in  all  directions.  It  spread 
rapidly;  the  gospel  was  very  simple  and  imposed  no 
burdensome  conditions,  and  it  soon  proved  itself  to  be 
capable  of  striking  root  in  any  country.  The  Apostle 
Paul  was  the  first  great  theologian  of  the  Church  ;  but 
his  doctrine,  as  will  happen  in  such  a  case,  does  not  in 
all  points  spring  out  of  the  nature  of  the  religion  itself. 
The  Pauline  theology  is  an  attempt  to  reconcile  the 
facts  of  Christianity  and  especially  that  great  stumbling- 
block  to  the  Jews,  the  death  of  the  Messiah,  with  the 
requirements  of  Jewish  thought.  Instead  of  seeing  in 
the  death  of  Christ,  as  the  older  apostles  at  first  did, 
^  a  perplexing  enigma,  St.  Paul  saw  in  it  the  principal 
manifestation  of  the  compassion  of  the  Saviour,  and 
the  great  purpose  for  which  he  had  come  into  the 
world.  He  concentrated  attention  on  Christ's  death 
,  and  made  the  cross  rather  than  the  doctrine  of  the 
</  Messiah  the  burden  of  his  teaching.  To  understand 
Paul  we  must  distinguish  between  his  religion  and  his 
theology.  His  religious  position  is  essentially  the  same 
as  that  of  Jesus  himself;  with  him,  too,  the  new  religion 
is  that  of  father  and  child,  and  of  the  consequences 
which  inevitably  flow  from  such  a  union.  But  the 
movement  of  thought  which  began  at  the  moment  of 
the  crucifixion,  the  concentration  of  Christian  faith  and 
love  on  the  person  of  the  Saviour,  was  now  complete. 
The  figure  of  the   Crucified  with   its   powerful    tragic 


CHAP.  XXII  '  Christianity  421 

attraction,  and  with  its  deep  lessons  of  conquest  by 
self-surrender,  of  life  by  dying,  remained  from  St.  Paul 
onwards,  in  the  centre  of  the  faith. 

The  world  of  the  early  centuries  was  in  great  need 
of  a  religion,  and  Christianity  supplied  the  place  which 
was  vacant.  Brought  in  contact,  in  the  great  ocean 
of  the  Roman  Empire  where  all  currents  met,  with 
religions  and  philosophies  of  every  kind,  it  proved  best 
suited  to  the  task  of  supplying  an  inspiration  for  life, 
uniting  together  different  classes  of  men  and  schools 
of  thought.  But  in  the  wide  arena  of  the  Empire  it 
received  as  well  as  gave,  and  in  its  encounters  with 
strange  rites  and  doctrines  it  also  put  on  many  a 
strange  aspect.  It  became  the  heir  of  the  thoughts 
and  aspirations  of  a  hundred  empires ;  all  the  pious 
sentiments  that  flowed  together  from  every  quarter  of 
the  world  helped  to  enrich  its  doctrine,  and  to  make 
it  the  great  reservoir  it  is  of  all  the  tendencies  and 
views,  even  those  most  contrary  to  each  other,  which 
are  connected  with  religion.  Its  institutions  are  of 
diverse  origin.  From  the  Jews  it  received  its  earliest 
Bible,  for  the  Christians  had  at  first  no  sacred  books 
but  those  of  the  old  covenant,  and  its  weekly  festival, 
though  the  day  was  changed.  Its  God  was  the  God 
of  the  Old  Testament,  and  its  Saviour  was  the  Messiah 
of  Jewish  prophecy,  so  that  it  was  a  continuation  of  the 
Jewish  religion,  and  the  attempts  which  were  made  by 
early  Gnostics  to  dissolve  this  tie  were  soon  forgotten. 

From  Greece  it  received  much.  The  world  it  had 
to  conquer  was  Greek,  and  the  conquest  could  only 
take  place  by  an  accommodation  to  Greek  thought 
and  to  Greek  ways.  In  the  end  of  chapter  xvi.  we 
spoke  of  the  second  Greek  religion  which  arose  under 
the  influence  of  philosophy,  and  found  its  way  wherever 
Greek  culture  spread.  In  this  great  movement,  Chris- 
tianity found  a  preparation  for  its  coming  in  the  Greek 
world,  without  which  its  spread  must  have  been  much 
more  doubtful.      In    the    Graeco-Roman    religion   the 


422  History  of  Religion  part  v 

advances  which  appear  in  Christianity  are  already  pre- 
figured. Thought  has  been  busy  in  building  up  a 
great  doctrine  of  God,  such  a  God  as  human  reason 
can  arrive  at,  a  Being  infinitely  wise  and  good,  who 
is  the  first  cause  and  the  hidden  ground  of  all  things, 
the  sum  of  all  wisdom,  beauty,  and  goodness,  and  in 
whom  all  men  alike  may  trust.  Greek  thought  also 
found  much  occupation  in  the  attempt  to  reach  a  true 
account  of  man's  moral  nature  and  destiny.  Both  in 
theory  and  in  practice  many  an  attempt  was  made  to 
build  up  the  ideal  life  of  man,  and  thus  many  minds 
were  prepared  for  a  religion  which  places  the  riches  of 
the  inner  life  above  all  others.  The  Greek  philosopher's 
school  was  a  semi-religious  union,  the  central  point  of 
which  was,  as  is  the  case  with  Christianity  also,  not 
outward  sacrifice  but  mental  activity.  It  is  not  wonder- 
ful therefore  if  Christian  institutions  were  assimilated 
to  some  extent  to  the  Greek  schools.  It  has  recently 
been  shown  that  the  celebration  of  the  Eucharist  came 
very  early  to  bear  a  close  resemblance  to  that  of  a 
Greek  mystery,  and  that  there  is  an  unbroken  line 
of  connection  between  the  discourse  of  the  Greek 
philosopher  and  the  Christian  sermon.  In  some  of 
the  Greek  schools  pastoral  visitation  was  practised, 
and  the  preacher  kept  up  an  oversight  of  the  moral 
conduct  of  his  adherents.  While  Christianity  certainly 
had  vigour  enough  to  shape  its  own  institutions,  and 
may  even  be  seen  to  be  doing  so  in  some  of  the  books 
of  the  New  Testament,  the  agreement  between  Greek 
and  Christian  practices  amounts  to  something  more 
than  coincidence. 

It  was  towards  the  end  of  the  second  century  that 
the  alliance  between  Christianity  and  the  Greek  world 
was  finally  ratified.  Till  then  belief  and  practice  were 
determined  mainly  by  custom  and  tradition  ;  but  now 
these  were  to  give  way  to  definite  laws  and  settled 
institutions.  There  came  to  full  development,  about 
the    period    we    have    mentioned,    a    highly-organised 


CHAP,  xxii  Christianity  423 

system  of  church  government,  a  canon  of  sacred  books 
of  Christian  origin,  and  a  creed  in  which  the  beliefs 
of  Christians  were  drawn  together  in  one  statement. 
It  cannot  be  denied  that  the  elaborate  external  forms 
with  which  the  religion  of  Jesus  was  thus  invested 
went  far  to  change  its  spirit  also.  But  this  happens 
to  every  religion  which  reaches  the  stage  of  organising 
itself  in  order  to  continue  in  the  world  and  to  rule  per- 
manently in  human  thought  and  in  human  society.  No 
external  forms  can  adequately  express  living  religious 
ideas ;  and  yet  there  must  be  external  forms  in  order 
that  religious  ideas  may  be  perpetuated.  The  ministers 
of  the  new  truth  inevitably  rise  in  dignity  till  they 
grow  into  a  hierarchy.  That  truth  inevitably  seeks 
to  establish  itself  as  scientifically  true,  and  with  the 
aid  of  the  ruling  philosophical  tendency  of  the  day 
clothes  itself  in  a  view  of  the  universe  and  in  a  creed. 
Thus  the  essence  of  Christianity  came  to  consist  not 
in  loving  the  Master  and  following  him  in  faith  and 
love,  but  in  upholding  the  authority  of  the  Church, 
receiving  her  sacraments,  and  believing  various  meta- 
physical and  transcendental  statements.  Here  also 
a  hard  shell  is  formed  round  the  spiritual  kernel  of 
the  religion  whichi,  if  it  is  fitted  to  preserve  the  latter 
in  rude  and  stormy  times,  is  also  fitted  to  confuse  and 
also  apt  to  conceal  it. 

In  each  of  the  countries  to  which  it  came,  Christianity  p^ 
adopted  what  it  could  of  the  religion  formerly  existing 
there.  The  old  religions  of  these  lands  were  not  all 
alike,  and  hence  it  came  to  pass  that  as  the  language 
of  Rome  was  transformed  in  various  ways,  and  passed 
into  the  different  yet  cognate  tongues  of  the  Romance 
nations,  so  the  religion  of  the  Empire,  combining 
with  various  forms  of  heathenism,  passed  into  several 
national  religions,  the  differences  of  which  are  at 
least  as  conspicuous  as  their  similarity.  In  Italy 
Christianity  appears  to  be  a  system  of  local  deities, 
each  village  worshipping  its   own   Madonna   or   saint. 


424  History  of  Religion  part  v 

In  Holland  worship  consists  almost  entirely  of  preach- 
ing. In  other  countries  the  ritual  and  the  intellectual 
elements  of  religion  are  blended  in  varying  proportions  ; 
and  the  former  heathenism  of  each  land  is  also  to  be 
traced  in  many  a  popular  observance  and  belief.  So 
great  is  the  variety  of  the  religions  of  Europe,  not  to 
mention  that  of  the  negroes  or  the  Shakers  of  America, 
that  many  have  doubted  whether  they  ought  all  to  be 
considered  as  branches  of  one  faith,  or  whether  they 
would  not  more  fitly  be  regarded  as  so  many  national 
religions  which  have  all  alike  connected  themselves 
with  Christianity.  Against  this  there  is  to  be  urged 
in  the  first  place  that  as  a  matter  of  history  they  are 
all  undoubtedly  offshoots  of  the  religion  of  Jesus.  It 
may  also  be  urged  that  wherever  the  name  of  Jesus 
is  named,  his  ideas  must  to  some  extent  be  present, 
however  much  they  are  obscured  and  prevented  from 
operating  by  lower  modes  of  view.  The  Christianity 
of  no  country  ought  to  be  judged  by  the  attitude  of 
its  most  ignorant  or  even  of  its  average  adherents ; 
and  in  every  land  where  Christianity  prevails,  an 
influence  connected  with  religion  is  at  work,  which 
makes  for  the  emancipation  and  elevation  of  the  human 
person,  and  for  the  awakening  of  the  manifold  energies 
of  human  nature.  This,  as  we  saw,  is  the  immediate 
and  native  tendency  of  the  religion  of  Jesus  ;  it  opens 
the  prison  doors  to  them  that  are  bound ;  it  com- 
municates by  its  inner  encouragement  an  energy  which 
makes  the  infirm  forget  their  weaknesses,  it  fills  the 
heart  with  hope  and  opens  up  new  views  of  what  man 
can  do  and  can  become.  It  is  this  that  makes  it  the 
one  truly  universal  religion.  Islam,  it  is  true,  has  also 
proved  its  power  to  live  in  many  lands,  and  Buddhism 
has  spread  over  half  of  Asia.  But  Buddhism  is  not  a 
full  religion,  it  does  not  tend  to  action  but  to  passivity, 
and  affords  no  help  to  progress.  Islam,  on  the  other 
hand,  is  a  yoke  rather  than  an  inspiration  ;  it  is 
inwardly  hostile  to  freedom,  and  is  incapable  of  aiding 


CHAP.  XXII  Christianity  425 

in  higher  moral  development.  Christianity  has  a 
message  to  which  men  become  always  more  willing 
to  respond  as  they  rise  in  the  scale  of  civilisation  ;  it 
has  proved  its  power  to  enter  into  the  lives  of  various 
nations,  and  to  adapt  itself  to  their  circumstances 
and  guide  their  aspirations  without  humiliating  them. 
A  religion  which  identifies  itself,  as  Christianity  does, 
with  the  cause  of  freedom  in  every  land,  and  tends  to  ]/^ 
unite  all  men  in  one  great  brotherhood  under  the 
loving  God  who  is  the  Father  of  all  alike,  is  surely 
the  desire  of  all  nations,  and  is  destined  to  be  the 
faith  of  all  mankind. 

A  bibliography  of  the  recent  study  of  Christianity  would  be  far  too 
extensive  for  this  book.  An  excellent  statement  on  the  subject  will  be 
found  at  the  hands  of  Professor  Sanday  in  the  Oxford  Pioceedmgs,  vol.  iL 
p.  263,  sqq. 


CHAPTER   XXIIE 

CONCLUSION 

It  will  not  be  expected  that  the  result  of  the  great 
movement  traced  in  the  chapters  of  this  work  can  be 
summed  up  in  a  few  words.  We  set  out  with  a  defini- 
tion of  our  subject  which  we  said  could  only  be  fully- 
verified  after  religion  had  accomplished  its  growth  and 
had  fully  unfolded  its  nature.  We  also  set  out  with 
the  assumption  that  all  the  religion  of  the  world  is 
one,  and  that  it  exhibits  a  development  which  is  in 
'^^the  main  continuous,  from  the  most  elementary  to 
the  highest  stages.  We  shall  not  now  attempt  to 
justify  by  argument  that  definition  or  that  assumption. 
The  history  which  we  have  sought  to  place  before 
the  reader  must  itself  be  the  proof  of  them.  All  that 
can  be  done  in  bringing  this  work  to  a  close  is  to 
point  out  one  great  line  of  development,  which  may 
be  recognised  more  or  less  distinctly  in  the  growth 
of  each  religion,  and  may  therefore  be  held  to  be 
characteristic  of  religion  as  a  whole.  No  doubt  the 
growth  of  religion,  as  of  other  human  activities,  has 
many  sides  and  aspects,  but  perhaps  it  may  be  possible 
to  specify  the  central  line  of  growth  in  which  the 
explanation  of  all  the  subsidiary  and  parallel  forward 
movements  is  to  be  found. 

It  was  stated  in  our  first  chapter  that  religion  is 
the  expression  of  human  needs  with  reference  to  higher 
beings  who  are   supposed   to   be   capable   of  fulfilling 

426 


CHAP.  XXIII  Conclusion  427 

men's  desires,  and  it  was  also  stated  as  an  inference  , 
from  this,  that  the  growth  of  human  needs  is  the  y 
cause  of  religious  change  and  progress.  If  this  is 
true,  then  the  key  to  the  progress  of  religion  is  to 
be  found  in  the  successive  emergence  in  human  experi- 
ence of  higher  and  still  higher  needs.  If  we  can 
discover  the  order  in  which  higher  aspirations  succes- 
sively emerge  in  the  growth  of  humanity,  then  we  shall 
possess  the  chief  clue  to  the  course  of  religious  advance. 
Now  while  there  is  infinite  variety  in  the  needs  and 
desires  of  men,  every  land  and  each  nation  having 
ideals  all  its  own,  we  can  yet  discern,  on  a  broad  view 
of  human  progress,  an  advance  from  lower  to  higher 
needs  which  is  common  to  the  human  race,  and  manifests 
itself  in  the  history  of  each  nation.  Three  successive 
conditions  of  human  life  stand  out  before  us  as  markedly 
distinct,  and  as  occurring  wherever  civilisation  continues 
to  advance.  The  first  is  that  in  which  material  needs 
are  all-absorbing ;  the  second  that  in  which  freedom 
from  material  needs  has  been  to  some  extent  attained, 
and  the  highest  aspirations  are  directed  to  the  safety 
and  advancement  of  the  nation  in  which  men  find 
themselves  united  and  secure ;  and  the  third  is  that 
in  which  the  individual  realises  his  own  value  apart 
from  the  state,  and  develops  a  personal  ideal  which  is 
thenceforward  his  chief  end.  To  these  three  stages 
of  human  existence  three  types  of  religion  correspond, 
and  the  growth  of  religion  consists  in  the  main  in 
its  passage  from  the  lower  to  the  higher  of  these 
stages. 

The  religion  of  the  tribe  belongs  to  that  stage  of 
man's  existence  in  which  his  energies  are  entirely 
occupied  in  the  struggle  against  nature  and  against 
other  tribes.  The  conditions  of  his  life  do  not  allow 
his  higher  faculties  to  grow,  and  while  he  is  not 
without  many  glimpses  and  anticipations  of  higher 
things,  his  religion,  as  a  whole,  is  a  mass  of  childish 
fancies,  and  of  fixed  traditions  which  he  cannot  explain, 


428  His  lory  of  Religion  part  v 

but  does  not  venture  to  criticise  or  change.  His  gods 
are  petty  and  capricious  beings,  and  his  modes  of 
influencing  them,  though  used  with  zeal  and  fervour, 
have  Httle  to  do  with  reason  or  with  taste  or  with 
morahty.  It  is  in  this  kind  of  religion  that  magic 
of  all  sorts  is  at  home. 

The  advance  from  the  religion  of  the  tribe  to  that 
of  the  nation  was  briefly  described  above  (p.  81,  sqq.). 
The  leading  classes  of  the  state  at  least  having  gained 
some  measure  of  security  and  leisure,  ideas  of  a  nobler 
order  spring  up  in  their  minds.  The  service  of  the  great 
gods  of  the  state  is  organised  with  befitting  dignity 
and  splendour ;  the  best  minds  contribute  to  it  all 
they  can  in  the  way  of  art,  of  poetry,  of  purified 
legend,  of  stately  ceremonial.  Patriotism  and  religion 
are  one,  the  offices  of  worship  are  upheld  by  the  whole 
power  of  the  state,  and  the  gods  speak  with  new 
authority  to  the  spirit  of  the  worshipper.  Now  it  is 
that  great  religious  systems  arise,  so  powerful,  so  highly 
organised,  so  splendidly  adorned,  and  surrounded  with 
such  venerable  traditions,  that  they  seem  to  be  destined 
for  eternity.  The  priesthood  becomes  a  very  powerful 
class,  and  acquires  a  personal  holiness  which  marks 
out  its  members  as  different  from  other  men ;  the 
sacrifices  acquire  the  character  of  divine  mysteries, 
every  detail  of  which,  even  the  most  trivial,  has  a 
sacred  meaning ;  religious  books  are  compiled  or 
written,  which  by  and  by  are  regarded  as  inspired, 
and  as  possessing  absolute  authority.  It  is  to  be 
observed  that  the  older  style  of  religion  is  not  at 
once  driven  out  by  the  growth  of  the  new,  but  continues 
to  flourish  beside  it  and  under  its  shadow.  The  tribes 
of  whom  the  nation  is  composed  still  cherish  and  adore 
their  own  special  deities.  That  older  worship  is  often 
thought  to  bring  blessings  which  the  new  worship  of 
the  state  does  not  command,  and  many  a  piece  of 
ancient  magic,  many  a  practice  which  has  no  connection 
with  the  state  religion,  still  goes  on,  especially  among 


CHAP.  XXIII  Conclusion  429 

those  who  are  not  cultivated  enough  to  appreciate  the 
nobler  faith  which  has  arisen. 

This,  however,  does  not  keep  the  national  faith  from 
growing  in  riches  and  consistency  ;  and  religion  appears, 
as  this  growth  proceeds,  to  have  attained  the  highest 
degree  of  power  and  authority  at  which  it  can  possibly 
arrive.  Commanding  as  it  does  all  the  resources  of 
the  nation,  enriched  by  all  that  can  be  brought  to  it 
of  material  or  intellectual  riches,  placed  in  a  position 
of  absolute  exaltation  and  inviolableness,  to  what  further 
conquests  can  it  still  look  forward  ?  Yet  when  a 
national  religion  appears  to  be  most  firmly  established, 
the  forces  are  most  certainly  at  work  which  must  ere 
long  lead  to  a  far-reaching  change.  While  the  national 
worship  has  been  growing  up  to  its  highest  splendours, 
the  lives  of  the  citizens  have  also  been  growing  richer 
and  deeper,  and  the  individual  soul  has  become  aware 
of  wants  and  longings  which  cannot  be  satisfied  in 
the  national  temple.  The  further  progress  of  religion 
is  apt  to  appear  as  a  revolt  against  the  system  which 
has  grown  so  strong.  The  individual  sets  out  to  seek 
a  consistent  intellectual  view,  and  so  figures  as  a  sceptic. 
He  aims  at  a  higher  moral  law  than  that  of  the  priestly 
system,  and  is  accused  of  undermining  public  morality. 
He  feels  a  new  call  to  personal  goodness,  a  new  need 
for  personal  atonement  with  the  ideal  holiness  which 
he  has  learned  to  apprehend  ;  and  as  the  public  ritual 
does  not  meet  these  needs,  he  seeks  for  new  religious 
associations  and  perhaps  appears  to  preach  a  doctrine 
contrary  to  patriotism,  as  it  is  subversive  of  the 
established  religion  of  his  country,  and  to  be  wilfully 
destroying  what  his  countrymen  revere,  and  wilfully 
breaking  through  old  ties  and  obligations.  Thus  the 
individualist  stage  of  religion  succeeds  the  national. 
But  the  individualist  stage  is  also,  in  part  at  least, 
the  universal  stage.  What  the  thinking  mind  and  the 
pious  heart  seeks  and  cannot  find  in  the  national 
worship,  is  a  religion   free  as  the  seeker  himself  has 


430  History  of  Religion  part  v 

become  free,  from  all  that  is  unreasonable  and  artificial, 
a  religion  therefore  in  which  every  thinking  mind  and 
every  pious  heart  can  have  a  share.  What  is  gained 
by  individuals  in  this  direction  is  capable,^  therefore, 
if  circumstances  favour,  of  proving  an  acquisition  not 
only  for  the  individual  reformer  or  his  nation,  but  for 
all  men.  But  as  the  rise  of  national  religion  does 
not  bring  to  an  end  the  ruder  worships  of  the  tribes, 
which  still  go  on  beside  it,  so  neither  does  the  rise 
of  individualism,  even  in  its  purest  form,  bring  to  an 
end  the  national  worship.  In  the  long  run  this  may 
follow,  but  it  does  not  take  place  at  once.  All  three 
forms  of  religion  go  on  together ;  the  religion  of  magic, 
that  of  stately  public  sacrifices  and  ceremonials,  and 
that  of  intellectual  effort  and  pious  meditation  and 
prayer.  Each  no  doubt  influences  to  some  extent  the 
others,  and  is  influenced  by  them  in  turn. 

The  movement  thus  indicated  from  tribal  to  national, 
and  from  national  to  individual  and  to  universal  religion, 
is  the  central  development  of  religion,  and  all  the 
minor  developments  which  might  be  traced,  as  that 
of  sacrifice  from  rude  to  spiritual  forms,  of  the  functions 
of  the  sacred  class,  of  the  morality  dictated  by  religion 
at  its  various  stages,  or  of  the  literature  connected  with 
piety,  may  be  explained  by  reference  to  this  one.  This 
movement  has  taken  place  in  every  nation;  we  have 
seen  something  of  it  in  each  of  our  chapters.  _  In  some 
nations  it  has  been  early  arrested,  so  that  no  important 
contribution  has  there  been  brought  to  the  general 
religion  of  mankind,  in  others  it  has  run  its  full  course, 
and  like  a  great  river  has  arrived  at  the  ocean  at  last, 
to  mingle  its  waters  with  those  of  other  mighty  streams. 
The  story  of  the  growth  of  the  world's  religion  has 
therefore  to  be  told  in  a  number  of  parallel  narratives, 
each  dealing  with  the  experience  of  a  separate  nation. 
There  can  scarcely  be  any  general  history  of  the  religion 
of  the  world,  in  addition  to  those  special  histories. 
Some  epochs,  it  is  true,  stand  out  as  having  witnessed 


CHAP,  xxiii  Conclusion  431 

simultaneous   religious    movements  in  many  lands,  as 
if  the  mnid  of  the  whole  human  race  had  then  been 
passing  through  the  same  crisis  of  thought      The  sixth 
century  B.C.  is  the  age  of  Confucius  and  of  Laotsze 
ni  Chma,  of  Gautama  in   India,  of  Jeremiah,  Ezekiel 
and  the  Unknown  Prophet  of  the  Exile,  of  Pythacroras, 
Heraclitus,  and  Xenophanes,  and  also  of  the  rise  into 
prominence  of  the  Greek  mysteries.     Widely  different 
as    the    movements   are   which   thus    took   place  con- 
temporaneously in  these  lands,  we  may  discern  in  all 
of  them  alike   the  tendency  to  plant   religion   in   the 
mmd  and  heart,  and  to  create   a   deeper   union  than 
the    old    external    one,   a    union    based    on    common 
intellectual  effort  and  spiritual  sympathy.     The  period 
immediately  before  and  after  the  Christian  era  might 
also  appear  to  be  one  in  which  the  mind  of  the  world 
as  a  whole  made  a  great  step  forward.     The  union  01 
many    nations    under    the    sway    of    Rome,    and    the 
universal  diffusion  of  the  Greek  language  as  a  means 
of   general    communication,   made    men    conscious   at 
this  time  as  they  had  never  been  before,  of  the  unity 
of  mankind    in   spite   of    all   differences    of    race   and 
speech.     A  philosophy  also  was  popular  at  this  time 
which  was  cosmopolitan  in  its  character,  and  occupied 
Itself    with   the  great   problems,   which   are   the   same 
for  all,  of  man's  relation  to  the  gods  and  of  his  moral 
duty.     If  we  add  to  this  the  combination  which  took 
place   at    Rome  and  wherever   different  races  met    of 
various  rites  and  creeds,  we  see  that  the  age  was  one 
singularly  disposed   to  the  breaking  down  of  artificial 
barriers  between  men,  and  singularly  fitted  to  promote 
the  growth  of  a   belief  in    which   men   of  all   nations 
might  unite  and  feel  themselves  to  be  brethren. 

In  these  two  periods  we  may  recognise  important 
steps  in  that  great  Education  of  the  Human  Race 
which  the  Apostle  Paul  refers  to  in  a  bold  philosophy 
of  history  (Galat.  iv.),  and  which  later  thinkers  have 
striven  to  set  forth  in  detail.     After  the  long  servitude 


432  History  of  Religion  part  v 

of  mankind  to  irrational  practices  and  to  gods  who 
were  no  gods,  there  comes  first  the  period  when  men 
recognise  that  the  true  God  is  to  be  found  not  merely 
outside  them  but  within  their  hearts  and  minds,  and 
then  the  period  when  they  find  that  the  true  God 
is  the  same  to  all  men,  that  they  are  all  children  of 
the  same  Father.  But  while  these  general  movements 
of  the  human  mind  may  be  acknowledged,  the  educa- 
tion of  the  human  race  proceeds  for  the  most  part  in 
nations.  As  each  nation  has  to  elaborate  its  own  art, 
its  own  literature,  its  own  system  of  law,  so  each 
nation  has  to  perfect  its  own  religion.  Even  after  a 
^  universal  faith  has  appeared,  religion  does  not  cease 
to  be  a  national  thing.  Each  people  moulds  the 
universal  religion  which  it  has  adopted  into  a  special 
form,  continues  by  means  of  it  the  rites  and  traditions 
of  the  past,  and  expresses  through  it  its  own  national 
character  and  aspirations.  Each  nation  as  well  as  each 
individual  must  necessarily  have  a  faith  specially  its 
own,  arising  out  of  its  own  character  and  experience 
and  in  great  part  incommunicable  to  others.  No  two 
nations  could  possibly  exchange  religions. 

But  on  the  other  hand  every  nation  contains  within 
itself  forms  of  religion  which  differ  from  each  other 
as  widely  as  those  of  two  separate  nations.  It  has 
been  said  that  no  religious  belief  or  usage  which  has 
once  lived  can  ever  be  destroyed  ;  and  the  proof  of 
this  may  be  witnessed  in  every  nation.  Even  after 
that  religion  has  come  which  has  its  main  seat  in  the 
heart  and  soul,  the  ruder  forms  of  piety  live  on,  and 
even  at  times  aggressively  assert  themselves.  -If  there 
are  classes  for  whom  the  struggle  against  material 
hardships  still  continues,  no  lofty  religion  can  be 
attained  by  them  any  more  than  by  savage  tribes. 
As  the  conditions  of  their  life  forbid  the  growth  of 
their  higher  faculties,  their  religion  cannot  be  one  of 
thought  or  of  refinement,  but  must  be  one  which 
promises  palpable  benefits  or  an  escape  from  immediate 


CHAP.  XXIII  Conclusion  433 

dangers.  At  a  somewhat  higher  stage  is  the  class  of 
those  who,  while  partly  escaped  from  the  struggle 
against  want,  have  not  yet  fully  realised  themselves 
as  thinking  and  spiritual  beings,  and  to  whom  the 
benefits  of  religion  still  lie  outside,  rather  than  in  the 
inner  life.  When  the  benefits  of  religion  are  thus 
conceived,  its  processes  must  be  of  a  mechanical  nature. 
Hence  the  various  systems  of  apparatus  for  connecting 
the  worshipper  with  a  source  of  good  distant  from 
him  in  time  or  space,  and  for  fetching  as  it  were 
from  another  region,  with  certainty  and  accuracy, 
needed  supplies  of  grace. 

The  further  development  of  religion  in  a  community 
so  mixed  must  depend  on  the  progressive  education 
and  elevation  of  the  people.  As  more  and  more  of 
them  are  freed  first  from  distracting  wants  and  cares, 
and  then  from  sordid  and  materialistic  views,  their 
spiritual  nature  will  expand.  The  need  for  God  him- 
self rather  than  for  his  gifts,  will  arise  and  increase 
in  their  hearts,  and  they  will  grow  capable  of  that 
highest  religion  which  is  the  life  of  the  soul  with 
God  ;  they  will  feel  its  beauty  and  will  drink  of  the 
deep  springs  which  it  contains,  of  strength  and  peace. 
To  attain  this  true  religion  the  human  race  has 
had  to  travel  far  and  to  make  many  experiments. 
•  Many  temples  were  built  and  fell  to  ruin  before  the 
true  temple  of  the  soul  was  reached  in  which,  as  each 
finds  what  he  as  an  individual  requires,  there  is  also 
room  for  all  mankind.  Even  after  this  highest  religion 
has  been  made  known  to  men,  it  has  often  been 
obscured  and  lost,  and  many  a  struggle  has  been 
needed  to  vindicate  its  claims  and  help  it  to  retain 
its  rightful  place.  But  with  growing  experience  the 
world  becomes  more  assured  that  the  simplest  and 
broadest  religion  ever  preached  upon  this  earth  is 
also  the  best  and  the  truest,  and  that  in  maintaining 
Christianity  as  at  first  preached,  and  applying  it  in 
every  needed  direction,  lies  the  hope  of  the  future  of 

2  E 


434  History  of  Religion  part  v 

mankind.  To  those  who  agree  in  this  conclusion 
the  history  of  the  religion  of  the  world,  full  of  errors 
and  of  grievous  failures  as  it  has  been  seen  to  be, 
cannot  appear  to  have  been  a  vain  and  purposeless 
excursion  in  a  land  of  shadows.  Not  without  a  divine 
call,  and  not  without  divine  guidance  did  man  set  out 
/  so  early,  and  persevere  so  constantly  in  spite  of  all 
his  disappointments,  in  the  search  for  God. 


INDEX 


Aesir,  267 

Ahura  Mazda,  387,  391,  397,  398, 

405 
Allah,  222 

Allat,  "The  Lady,"  165,  173,  219 
Amartas,  44 
Anaitis.  407 
Ancestor-worship,  primitive,  33    40 

China,  115 

Aryan,  250 

India,  338 
Angels   and   demons,  Persia,    400, 

407 
Animals,  worship  of,  29,  57 

in  Peru,  86 

in  Babylonia,  96 

in  Egypt,  130 

how  accounted  for,  133 

in  Arabia,  219 

in  Greece,  277 
Animation    of    Nature    in    savage 

thought,  24 
Animism,  meaning  of,  40,  96,  308 

in  Roman  religion,  308 
Anthropomorphism,  53 

Babylonia,  96 

Egypt,  132 

Greece,  281 
Apocalypse,  213 
Arabia,  before  Mahomet,  218 

gods  of,  219 

Judaism  and  Christianity  in,  223 
Art,  Phenician,  174 

Egyptian,  132 

Greece,  280,  292 
Aryans,  the,  245 

description  of,  248 


in  Europe,  256 

religion,  250 

etymology  of  names  of  gods,  250 
Ascetics,  Brahmanic,  350 
Ashera.  Canaanite  goddess,  172 
Ashtoreth,  176 

Association,     forms     of      religious 
Totem-Clan,  70 

nation,  84 

Greek  mysteries,  298 

Greek  schools,  303 

new  form  in  Israel,  212 
in  Islam,  233 
Asuras,  44 

Baal,  Canaanite  god,  171,  189 
Babylon   and   Assyria,  religion   of, 

93 

connection   with    Egypt,  94,  96, 

97 

China,  93,  98 

mythology  of,  100 . 
Belief,  an  essential  part  of  religion, 

9,  13 
less    important     than      rite      in 

primitive  religion,  66 
Brahman,  etymology  of,  339 
Brahmanism,  338 
Buddhism,  353,  sqq. 

in  China,  123 
Bti7-nt  Njal,  264 
Burton,  Captain,  Pilgrimage  to  E 

Medinah  mid  Mecca,  236 


Caaba,  220,  236 
Cabiri,  177 


435 


436 


History  of  Religio7i 


Canaanites,  170 

religion  of,  171,  1 91 
Caste,  338 
Celts,  257 
China,  106 

connection  with  Babylonia,  107 

state  religion  of,  11 1 
Christianity,  411,  sqq. 
Civilisation    and   religion   advance 
together,  15 

origin  of,  19 
Classification  of  religions,  80 
Confucius,  107,  117,  sqq. 
Continuity  of  growth  in  religion,  6 
Curiosity,  an  element  of  religion, 
T2 

Daniel,  213 

Decalogues,  202 

Definition  of  religion,  preliminary, 

8;  fuller,  13 
Degeneration  in  civilisation,  19 

in  religion,  38 
Deuteronomy,  201 
Devas,  44,  396 
Development  of  religion,  8,  51,  sqq.. 

430,  sqq. 
Domestic  worship,  origin  ot,  33 

China,  115 

Aryans,  251 

Iceland,  264 

Greece,  275 

Rome,  311 

Brahmanic,  342 
Dualism,  56 

Eddas,  266 

Egypt,  religion  of,  126,  sqq. 

Elijah  and  Elisha,  190 

Elves,  265 

Ephod,  188 

Etruria,  religion  of,  318 

Exile  of  Israel,  202 

Ezra,  204 

Fairy  Tales  (German),  262 

Fate,  289 

Festivals,  Greek,  294 

Fetish-worship,  35 

Fetishism,  38 

Fire,  31 


Frazer,     Mr.,      58,     59  ;       Golden 

Bough,  28,  279 
Frisia,  religion  in,  263 
Functional  deities,  Greece,  275 

Rome,  308 
Funeral  practices,  62 

Egypt,  149 
Icelandic,  264 
Greece,  282,  290 
India,  332 
Persian,  405 

Games,  Greek,  294 
Gautama  Buddha,  356 

his  death,  361 
Germans,  the  ancient,  258 

their  gods,  259 

identified  with  Roman,  260 

working  religion  of,  260 

later  religion,  263 
Ghosts,  34 
Gods,  the  great,  in  Babylonia,  98 

in  Egypt,  137 

of  the  Aryans,  252 

German,  259 

Icelandic,  266 

of  Homer,  285 

Roman,  31 1 

Indian,  326 
Gomme,  Ethnology  in  Folklore,  60, 

249.  254 
Greece,  274 
Grimm,  German  Mythology,  260 

Hades,  291 

Hammurabi,  93,  95,  202 
Hanyfs,  224 

Hartmann,  Edward  von,  46 
Heaven,  52 
an  object  of  primitive   worship, 

31,   53 
Babylonia,  93 

China,  112 

Arabia,  2x9 

India,  318,  326,333 
Hegira,  231 
Hell,  229,  265,  392 
Henotheism,  56 
Heroic  legends,  Babylonian,  lOO 

German,  262 
Hesiod,  291 


Index 


437 


Homer,  283 

worship  in,  287 
Homeric  gods,  285 
Hymns,  Babylonian,  101 

Egyptian,  144 

Vedic,  328 

Persian,  383.     See  Psalms 

Iceland,  264 

decay  of  old  religion  of,  272 
Idols,  none  in  primitive  religion,  73 

Arabia,  219,  220 

German?  264 
Immortality,  Chirva,  1 15 

Egypt,  152 
Incas,  the  religion  of,  85-88 
India,  324 
Individual,  the,  not  considered   in 

primitive  religion,  76 
Individual  religion,  Babylonia,  104 

Israel,  205 

Greece,  300 

India,  346 

a  high  stage  of  religion,  429 

the  porch  to  universaRsm.  430 

See  Buddhism 
Indo-Europeans.     See  Aryans 
Isajah  xH.-lxvi.,  203 
Islam,  217.     See  Mahomet 

meaning  of,  226 

spread  of,  237 

a  universal  religion,  240 

weakness  of,  241 
Israel,  179 
Israel  and  Canaanites,  184 

Prophets,  189 

reforms  of  religion,  200 

exile,  202 

the  return,  204 
Istar,  lOl 

Jainism,  362 

Japan,  115 

Jehovah,  182 

Jesus  Christ,  413,  sqq. 

Jewish  religion,  205 

spiritual  elements  of,  209 
heathenish  elements  of,  210 
Persian  influence  on  ?  215 

Jinns,  220 

Job,  215 


Judaism,  205    sqq. 

Hellenistic  period  of,  412 
at  time  of  Christ,  413 

Kathenotheism,  55,  336 
Koran,  225,  227,  239 

Lang,    Andrew,    25,    59:    Myth, 

Ritual,  and  Religion,  22 
Legge,  Dr,  no,  113 
Literatures,  sacred,  179 

Babylonia,  93,  lOO 

Buddhist,  353 

China,  108 

Eddas,  266 

Egypt,  127,  154 

Koran,  225,  227,  239 

Israel,  179,  207 

Sibylline  books,  319 

Vendidad,  406 

Zend-Avesta,  382 
Local  nature  of  early  religion,  60 
Local  observances,  Aryan,  253 

old  German,  262 

Icelandic,  264 
Lockyer,  Dawn  of  Aslrenomy,  94 

Magi,  405 
Magic,  74 

Babylonia,  95 

Egypt,  15s 
Mahomet,  225,  sqq, 

preaching,  228 

leaves  Mecca,  231 

at  Medina,  232 

breach  with  Judaism  and  Christi- 
anity, 234 

domestic,  235 
Manicheism,  408 
Mannhardt,    Feld  -  und  IValdkulte, 

S9,  262 
Manu,  law  of,  344 
Massebah,  172 
Maya,  349 
M'Lennan,  59 
Mecca,  220 

becomes  capital  of  Islam,  235 
Meyer,  E.,  247 
Mithra,  407 
Moloch,  174 


438 


History  of  Religion 


Monarchical      Pantheon      uf      the 

Aryans,  253 
Monotheism,  not  primitive,  37,  56 

in  Egypt?  144 

emergence  of,  in  Israel,  196 

in  India,  348 
Morality,  in  primitive  religion,  77 

Egyptian  religion,  155 

Greece,  279 

Vedic  religion,  335 

Brahmanism,  345 

of  Buddhism,  372 
Moslem,  meaning  of,  226 

duties  of  the,  238 
Miiller,    Mr.     Max,     10,   42,    246, 
250,  332 

his    theory   of  the  origin   of  re- 
ligion, 43 
Mycena;,  282 
Mysteries,  the  Greek,  298 
Mythology,  origin  of,  51 

Babylonia,  100 

Egypt,  138 

Greece,  280 

Icelandic,  267 

Indian,  333 

National  religion,  how   different 
from  earlier  form,  81,  428 

Israel,  191 
Natural  religion,  80 
Nature  gods,  growth  of,  51 
Nature-worship,  the  greater,  30,  43 

the  minor,  32,  42,  57 
Nirvana,  361,  373 

Omens,  290 

Roman,  312 
Orientation,  of  temples,  100 
Origin    of   religion,    (i)    Primitive 
revelation,  26 

(2)  Innate  idea,  26 

(3)  Psychological  necessity,  27 
Orphism,  302 

Other  World,  the 
in  Egypt,  151 
with  the  Semites,  167 
Jewish  beliefs  about,  214 
Arabia,  220 
Iceland,  265,  266 
Homer,  283 


Pantheism,  in  Egypt,  148 

India,  336,  348 
Patriarchal    society  and   religion  of 

Aryans,  248 
Perkunas,  36 
Persia,  381 

primitive  religion,  385 

contact  of  Jews  with,  401,  406 
Pfleiderer,  Otto,  47 
Phenicians,  170 

religion  of,  176 

influence  on  Greece,  282 
Phihstines,  170 
Philosophy,  Greek,  301 

Indian,  347 
Polytheism,  origin  of,  53 

Indian,  335 
Prayer,  primitive,  71 

Israel,  198,  212 

Indian,  339 

Persian,  382,  394 
Priestly  code,  202,  403 
Priests,  none  in  the  earliest  religion, 
72 

not  necessary  in  early  Israel,  187 

Roman,  313 

Brahmans,  338 
Primitive  religion,  the,  21 

difference   between   it   and    later 
forms,  79 
Prophets,  in  Israel,  189 

their  criticism  of  the  old  religion 
of  Israel,  192 
Psalms,  210.     See  Hymns 
Purity,  laws  of, 

Israel,  209 

Persia,  404 

Rationalism,  Greece,  297 

India,  350 
Reforms  of  Israelite  religion,  200 

of  Augustus,  322 
Renouf,  Le  Page,  145 
Revealed  religion,  80 
R^ville,  M.,  25,  31,  42 
Resurrection,  214 
Retribution,  after  death, 

in  Egypt,  155 

Mahomet,  229 

Israel,  214 
Rig-veda,  the,  325 


Index 


439 


Ritualism,  Brahmauic,  343 

Roman,  314 

Persian,  403 

Jewish,  204,  208 
Rome,  305,  sqq. 
Rouge,  M.  de  la,  145 

Sacred  places,  59 

Semitic,  165 

Canaanite,  184,  200 

Arabia,  219 

Germany,  261 
Sacred  seasons,  75 
Sacrifice,     primitive,     generally    a 
meal,  67 

in  China,  114 

Semitic,  164 

human  (Phenician),  175 
(Israel),  187 
(Icelandic),  265 

early  Israelite,  183 

denonnced  by  O.  T.  prophets,  193 

Jewish,  207 
Icelandic,  264 

Homeric,  287 

Persia,  394 
Saussaye,  P.  D.  Chantepie  de  la,  17 
Savage   elements   in    all   the   great 

religions,  21 
Savages,  their  religion  falls  short  of 
the  definition,  8 

represent    the   original    state    of 
mankind,  19 

mental  habits  of,  23 

all  have  religion,  25 

the  religion  of,  described,  29,  sqq. 

their  beliefs  furnish  the  elements 
of  the  great  religions,  63 
Schrader  (Aryans),  247,  252 
Semites,  161 

religion  of,  162 

gods  of,  164,  173 

goddess  of,  99,  165,  219 
Seraph,  220 
Shin-to,  115 
Sin,  Babylon,  103 

Israel,  205 
Slavs,  256 
Smith,  Robertson,  61  ;  Religion  of 

the  Semites,  58,  70,  162 
Spencer,  Mr.  H.,  11,  39 


Spirit,  the  great,  36 
Spirits,  of  dead  persons,  33 

worship  of,  the  origin  of  all  re- 
ligion ?  38 
in  Babylonia,  95 
in  China,  114 
in  Arabia,  220 
in  Greece,  275 
in  Persia,  398 
Standing  stones,  60 
Sun,  30 

Sun-gods,  Babylonia,  99 
Egypt,_i40,  148 
Phenician,  176 
Arabian,  219 
Supreme     Being,     an     object      of 

primitive  worship?  36 
Survival    of    savage    state    in    the 

great  religions,  21 
Synagogue,  212 
Syncretism,  of  gods  in  Egypt,  148 

Taboo,  72 

Taoism,  121 

Taylor,  Dr.  I.,  247,  248 

Temples,,  not  primitive,  72 

Babylonia,  99 

Egyptian,  128,  130,  136 

Phenician  and  Jewish,  178 

Greek,  292 
^  Roman,  318,  323 
Teraphim,  188 
Teutons,  256.     See  Germans 
Thunder,  30,  265,  270 
Tiele,  Dr.  C.  P.,  15 
Totemism,  58,  135,  277 
Transmigration,  302,  351,  368 
Tree-worship,  primitive,  32,  59,  278 

Babylonia,  loi 

Canaanites,  172 

Arabia,  219 

Greece,  278 
Tribal  religion,  57,  77,  427 
Tylor,  Mr.,  Primitive  Culture,  10, 
20,  25,  29,  39,  62,  63,  68 

Under-World,    the.    Babylonia, 
100,  102 
Egypt,  140,  142,  152 
Unity  of  all  religion,  4 
Universal  deities  of  the  Aryans,  252 


440 


History  of  Re/igion 


Universalism, 

in  O.  T.  prophets,  195 

in  Islam,  240 

in  Christianity,  419 
Urim  and  Thummiixi,  188 

Vedic  hymns,  328 
Vedic  religion,  324,  sqq. 

its  gods,  326 

is  it  early  or  late?   331 
Vow,  original  meaning  of,  75 

Waitz  and  Garland's  Anth-opologie 

der  Naturvdlker,  29 
Wellhausen,  J.,  163,  218 
Wells,  sacred,  32,  57,  59 


Worship,   an   essential    element    of 
religion,  9 
primitive,  66 
Chinese,  112 
Egyptian,  147 
Canaanite,  173 
IsraeUte,  187 
Jewish,  207 
Roman,  309 
See  Sacrifice 

Zeus,  etymology  of,  250,  286,  296 
Zoomorphism,  53 
Zoroaster,  384 

his  call,  388 

his  doctrine,  392 


THE  ENO 


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BL80.M55  1917 

History  of  religion  :  a  sketch  of 


Princeton  Theological  Seminary-Speer  Library 


1012  00162  3273 


